Mr. Diarmuid O'Flynn:

We have never concerned ourselves with the conviction, or otherwise, of any individual. For us, this has just been about getting bank debt justice for Ireland. With regard to justice on foot of the actions of individuals who did whatever they did, we never got involved. That is an issue for the courts and the people here. We know white-collar crime in this country is not punished anyway. Our view is that jailing somebody only costs us money. Where people are found to have committed white-collar crime, especially on this scale, the fitting punishment is to strip them of all their assets and put them on a Government pension if they are of an age and in a council house, just as they did to an awful lot of people in this country. Jailing them costs us money. The only way to teach manners and lessons regarding white-collar crime is to hit people where it hurts. Since greed is the cause, they should be hit where it hurts, namely, their pockets.

On the issue of whether fraudulent behaviour is a ground for appeal, of course it is. We are talking about the declaration used not only by Anglo Irish Bank but also by all the other Irish banks. In the lead-up to the blanket bank guarantee, the banks deliberately and knowingly misrepresented the true and fair value of what they had in their books. They were actually insolvent at that time. They were not suffering from liquidity problems; they were insolvent. This would have been revealed had they declared the true and fair value, which they were legally obliged to do. I am not referring to standards because they were complying with the standards. Standards comprise one thing; the law is another. They were not complying with the law. Therefore, they completely and deliberately misled the Government in the lead-up to the blanket bank guarantee. They also misled the European Central Bank. I do not believe the European Central Bank was fully aware of what was happening. It should have been but I do not know whether it was. That is why Mr. Trichet clamped down so hard on the Irish banks. They were using a standard that no other country in Europe was using to misrepresent their true circumstances. It was on that basis that they were the getting money from the emergency liquidity assistance fund. On those grounds, the promissory notes are invalidated.

Our fight now is not just for the €14.5 billion. In fact, it is not just for the €31 billion. Thirty-five billion euro was put into Anglo Irish Bank. People forget that a lot of money was taken out of our National Pensions Reserve Fund. Nearly €20 billion was taken out of the fund to be put into banks. It was not just what was borrowed. We took this out of our own pockets and put it into the banks. It is not just a question of that money because one should also consider the interest lost on that money over the years.

A conservative estimate with regard to the National Pensions Reserve Fund is that €25 million to €30 million was lost. We should ask the European Central Bank and perhaps the Council not just for the €31 billion. Some €69.7 billion is involved. It would not take a genius or actuary to calculate what we got back from the sale of the AIB shares lately and what we got back from Bank of Ireland. The relevant figures should be offset against one another to determine the figure we were forced to put in and what we believe we should have put in proportionate to our population in the eurozone. This is what we are arguing about.