Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Nagarajan for his presentation and his colleagues for attending. With the Vice Chairman's permission, I will put my questions in a conversational way and ask Mr. Nagarajan to be kind enough to answer as pithily as possible.

We have just heard what can be described as a comprehensive mouthful. I do not want it to reflect negatively on Mr. Nagarajan's report, but it is like a chunk of theory in abstract and conceptual language. As in the case of bar or pie charts, we do not have anything quantified in terms of what we need to do. It is all very well saying we agree that Christmas is a time of goodwill and that in that respect we would like to introduce measures that would make people more inclined to be kind to one another. Where is the Commission going with this initiative?

There are 20 million people unemployed across Europe. In Ireland there are 450,000 unemployed. Households and businesses are being creased by legacy debt. They cannot spend or invest. They are, psychologically and emotionally, out of the market, and the financial system has held and continues to hold the real economy to ransom. That is what is wrong and nobody is addressing the issue in hard, concrete language. I am not happy with where the country has been left as a result of six banks going on a lending splurge involving a sum of €200 billion in four years, with money provided by institutions, mainly European, and bondholders, and, when the music stopped, being secondary market investors, not the primary subscribers. They got away scot free because the euro system insisted that none of them take a serious hit for fear it would result in a cascade of losses all around the place. The euro system provided these six stupid little banks, two of which are now called pillar banks - two others are dead and buried - with emergency liquidity assistance, ELA, and European Central Bank, ECB, loans to pay approximately €75 billion to bondholders. That was wrong and remains so.

I refer to the promissory note nonsense that occurred a month or so ago, whereby an odious €31 billion of extraordinary liquidity assistance, ELA, secured on €31 billion of promissory notes - which means the people of Ireland are being forced to underwrite the exit of the bondholders - is now being spread over 40 years or thereabouts and back-loaded, as though it were some miracle elixir or cure. It is wrong.