Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Grimes, keeping that ... the minute of that very high-level meeting, in which, I reiterate, the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance, the most senior officials of all the institutions dealing with the finances of the State were in attendance, where the entire minute is given over to, yes, the crisis generally but the vast majority to problems of one and two financial institutions, in my ... or what I put to you was that the most senior official in finance referred to plain insolvency.

Keeping that in mind, and keeping in mind the earlier questions I asked you in relation to the discussions within the Department and the Central Bank about the process of providing emergency liquidity or emergency lending assistance not being possible where institutions were deemed to be ... deemed to be insolvent, but would need a guarantee to have such assistance, can I put it to you that a reasonable person would say that what we have here is an explanation for the guarantee that was given on 28-29 September? In other words, that it was to cover over the fact that two institutions were insolvent, that this was known at the highest level of the State, the political and the financial ... the political leadership and the financial leadership of the State, and that the guarantee was given in order to-----