Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I find that incredible. It is like handing out a loan to somebody who has no potential to pay it back and not being sure of what their income is or what cash they had in hand. We are talking about huge money here, a €1.1 billion hole that had to be filled. The taxpayer had to pony up for this. The taxpayer ponied up. Mr. Makhlouf and Mr. John Hogan from the Department of Finance are here this morning. I am absolutely astounded that nobody can tell me. They may not have it to hand now, but within the next hour or so somebody should be able to tell us what was in the reserves. What was there in Quinn Insurance at that point when the liability stood at €1.1 billion? That is the key question here.

I have never worked in insurance. I have been giving insurance companies money for years. I would understand the basics of that. If I was running a corner shop, I would understand this. We have a whole array of officials here - I am trying to go easy on them and I am not trying to wade into them too hard about it. With a whole array of officials here I cannot believe that nobody can give that figure to me. At that crunch point, when the main issue on the agenda here this morning is the collapse of Quinn Insurance and what has happened since, nobody can tell the committee or the public how much was in reserves with Quinn Insurance at that time. Can anybody guess? Can anybody even estimate? Was it €100 million? Was it less than €100 million? Was it €500 million? Was it €5 million? Can the Comptroller and Auditor General shed any light on this?