Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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Can I suggest to Mr. Honohan that someone from the Central Bank should go down to any high street shop and buy a tape recorder, and then he should put a couple of people in a room and listen to key people who were involved in Anglo Irish Bank, who said that they picked figures out of their backside to give to the Central Bank, who claimed they were going to go down swinging their arms and demanding a cheque, who claimed that this was part of a strategy to entrap the State into bailing out a bank when they knew the figure involved was a lot higher. To say that the Central Bank has not figured out a way to do it is incredible. We know there are tape recordings of very senior individuals of the bank to which Mr. Honohan has access and which he can listen to. Then he can make a determination as to whether those recordings or confessions, whatever one wants to call them, contain regulatory breaches. I genuinely have to say that the Governor's comments are disappointing. I put it to him that the only reason the Central Bank has done this - and the bank knew of the existence of the tapes in 2009 - is that-----