Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

My questions go to the heart of the issue. What are we being asked to guarantee? No Member of the House or member of the public would walk into a bank and sign a guarantee for anybody, even a close member of the family, without knowing how much he or she is going to guarantee, and they would certainly not sign it in circumstances where it was open-ended, with no limit to the guarantee. Frankly, the Labour Party is not prepared to do with the taxpayers' money what it would not be prepared to do with personal money. We need to know exactly what we are signing up to. The Tánaiste tells us this is a broad enabling measure, which means a blank cheque. It is a blank cheque for the banks, a blank legislative cheque to grant the Government enabling provisions to look after the situation and, in the case of this Government, it is an inappropriate blank cheque to give a Government that thought, three years ago when the Taoiseach was Minister for Finance, that the country was so flush with money that it could abolish the bank levy. These are the people asking us to trust them in respect of their relationship with the banks.

There are simple questions we want answered on behalf of the taxpayer that any individual going to sign a guarantee in a bank would ask in analogous circumstances. How much will we guarantee? What will be paid for it? Will we see the conditions beforehand and will the Government do something about the excessive rewards that those seeking the guarantee pay themselves? These are simple questions and if the Tánaiste is not able to answer them perhaps the Minister for Finance will provide satisfactory answers during the course of the day. If those fundamental questions are not answered to our satisfaction, the Labour Party will not support this Bill this evening.

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