Mr. Diarmuid O'Flynn:

The first thing I would say is that none of that is relevant to what happened. It would not matter whether Ireland was still in the very depths of despair - which an awful lot of people are and a huge proportion of this country still is - what happened was wrong and has to be challenged. It is that simple. The argument members are more likely to hear is that which the Deputy presented earlier, namely, that it was a Government guarantee so it is the responsibility of the Government and our banks and bankers. The main thing here is that German banks and German bankers were the most irresponsible. I can send the Deputy another link. Much like the big short on Wall Street, the German banks were reckless beyond belief, even more so than their Irish counterparts. They exposed themselves and they are still exposed. Danske Bank is still massively exposed and in massive danger even now. People have this notion about the responsible Germans. We bailed them out. The committee should make no mistake about that. We bailed them out, as did the Greeks, the Spanish and the Portuguese. The money that came into these countries in the form of loans, which are now being repaid by the people, went to German, French, Dutch and other banks. That is where it went. It did not go to bailing out the people. This is what the socialisation of debt has meant. It means that we are carrying the can not only for the Irish banks. A few of them should have just been let go. There is an argument that the entire system had to be saved, but we have been presented with a disproportionate and much larger part of the bill than we should have been. That should be our argument.