Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I see. I just wanted to make sure I understood the question. It is quite an achievement to have recouped all the money that we put into the banks. It was terrible to be in a position where that money needed to be put in in the first place. I can well understand the difficulty of that decision but, of course, there are all the costs that imposed on our society as well.

The reason we have a bank levy in place at the moment is so we can continue to collect revenue from the banks in recognition of all of the costs that investing in and supporting our banking system imposed on our economy and society. I will make further decisions in regard to it on budget day and in future budgets. However, we have that in place even though we have been successful in regaining the money that was put into AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB. That is to try to deal with the issue the Deputy is raising regarding the opportunity cost we had to confront by putting so much money into the three pillar banks.