Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know it is great rhetoric and great political positioning to scapegoat the banking sector, but if the country did not have functioning banking sector providing the credit lines private citizens and businesses need, it would continue to be bankrupt. Part of the bailout programme and part of what we have done for the past six years has had to be to restore a proper banking sector. If one applies more penal tax rules to banks than are applied to other businesses in the State, it will not achieve that. There is no loss of tax here. It is just a different arrangement of the period over which historic losses can be offset against tax liabilities.

The reason for it was not particularly to benefit the banks but to benefit the Exchequer and taxpayers in order that we would not have to pony up again by providing additional capital to replace the potential for the banks to offset historical losses against future tax liabilities.