Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It is not a question of enforcing a guarantee on a bank that does not want to take it up.

When we made our initial decision in regard to the Irish banks which were incorporated in the State, a strong argument began to emerge in this House that others needed to be accommodated very quickly. The point I made at the time was that perhaps they were joining a club but they did not know the price of that. The price was not that we were giving a guarantee for nothing so that people would come in under the umbrella and safety of the Irish State. It was argued in this House, because of the views that were being expressed from some of the institutions at the time, that some would feel left outside if they did not come in and feel they were being discriminated against.

When they checked on the conditionality and stringency of the guarantee conditions, it was open to them not to be prepared to pay that price. In fact, some institutions, because they are not incorporated in the State and their headquarters are incorporated elsewhere, are now benefiting from implicit and in some cases explicit state guarantees from other states where they are incorporated in those other states. As I understand it, one person said yesterday evening he did not feel it was necessary to take a guarantee on the double because he could get it from the parent institution.

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