Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I doubt if there is any Member who disagrees with the proposition that banks must be able to source funding abroad and lend it to their clients in order to maintain economic activity. However, the question remains as to why the markets are frozen towards Irish banks. The answer has to be that international banks regard Irish banks as having too many bad debts and bad loans on their books. That is the reason the money is not coming forward. The Financial Regulator timidly warned of the dangers of the huge expansion of credit and personal indebtedness, but did not seem to be able to enforce it. We have been left with a property overhang and that bubble is the cause of the problem, and not the events on which Deputy Micheál Martin lectures the US Congress.

Deputy Martin thinks it is churlish of public representatives in the US to take the two and a half page Bill they received and elaborate it into a 100 page Bill.

See this speech in context