Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputies Kieran O'Donnell and Olivia Mitchell. Perhaps the Chair would let me know when 20 minutes have elapsed.

Most people in this country share a sense of outrage at how we have come to this pass. That sense of outrage is apparent right across the country. There is outrage at the political ineptitude which has been a feature of why we are in this sorry situation. There was reckless flirtation with the property bubble over a long period. There was a refusal to heed warnings from responsible bodies outside the State — the IMF, the EU and many others. There were baseless assurances offered by those leading the Government that our property bubble was based on solid economic foundations, and all the while our public finances were heading on a course that was totally unsustainable and our competitiveness was being destroyed. There is a sense in which people believe the Government is in the dock, that the sorry pass we have now come to is in a sense a trial of the way in which this economy has been managed in recent years. That has been put under scrutiny and we are seeing its product now.

There is outrage not only with those who have led us, but at the behaviour of those who have led the banking system. There is a sense that there are many at the top of the banking system who have behaved in a wholly reckless way, who have betrayed their shareholders, the employees who work in the banks and, worse still, who have done great damage to our credibility as a country within which to manage financial institutions. There is also outrage at incompetent oversight. The role of auditors and regulators is in sharp focus. There is a sense that we do not yet have all of the answers regarding what failed us, why all the honeyed assurances we got from Ministers, regulators and central bankers were so wide of the mark. It is not enough to point to international difficulties because many of the problems we see in our banking system are the product of decisions made at home and of the way banks were managed here. That is the background we are up against.

There are many people in the country who would like to vent their fury on Anglo Irish Bank, who believe we should not be nationalising it today and that in doing so we are bailing out those who have behaved wrongly. We must make it crystal clear that we are not, if this nationalisation goes through, bailing out developers and bankers who behaved wrongly. We are not bailing out any of the auditors who let us down because they were not watching. We are not bailing out the regulators. There is a time for accountability for all of those. We want to see that accountability in this House. There can be no hiding behind the cloud of confidence, as we have seen before, when the Government stated it could not possibly reveal what was going on because there was too much at stake. We want accountability. We want people punished if punishment is due.

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