Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

That is something that must come out of this.

People are terrified that their job may be the next to go, that they can no longer rely on their pensions, that they can no longer rely on the banks. There is a yearning now for leadership, and that leadership has not been given. Let us be blunt. We have budgets that displayed no understanding of the challenge we face and now we are apparently trying to make running repairs on a budget that was hopelessly inept.

There is a sense too that banking strategy is being made up on the hoof. First, there is no question of recapitalisation. We are told that would be completely the wrong direction to go, that the banks are adequately capitalised. Day after day we were assured that was the case, that restructuring was what was needed. There was a "high noon" when the banks were brought together to have this restructuring. That idea was dropped. There was no more talk of restructuring and recapitalisation was back on the agenda. We were told that was the way forward. Now we are told nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank is the way forward.

We need to get a sense from the Minister, which he has not displayed today, that there is a grand strategy, that he has a sense of how he can achieve his objective of nationalising Anglo Irish Bank and managing it in a way that protects the taxpayer, that he has a strategy that will successfully recapitalise AIB and Bank of Ireland and keep them in private ownership. That is not what the markets believe. I do not believe what the Minister has said today has pointed the way to how he is going to make that strategy work in the face of what is happening.

One thing we could do to restore confidence is to properly debate this Bill and not rush it through on the basis of trust in assurances about the loan book, assurances about bonds that did not have a guarantee up to now and now perhaps have a guarantee, assurances about the way the bank will be run that do not have tied down accountability to the Oireachtas. We are not having the sort of debate we ought to have in this House in order that nationalisation will be a credible, well thought out, well stress-tested part of the Government strategy. This must be stress-tested and this is the House that does that, but it cannot do it if it is confined to a few hours of discussion. Many of the amendments will not be reached. Many of the sections will not be reached. The Government has put us into such a tight framework that we cannot do the job we were elected to do, which is to hold the Government to account and, through it, those institutions that are behind it. That is what we are supposed to be doing, but we are now being rushed into doing everything in a couple of hours. That is totally in contrast to the relaxed attitude since 30 September when the taxpayer was exposed. We have not had a sense of the Government designing a credible way through this. We still do not have credit flowing. Credit availability is worse now than it was on 30 September. We are making survival tougher for the businesses we need, the export businesses that are to be the future of this country.

Any seasoned legislator will confirm that rushed legislation is often flawed legislation. I have been around long enough to have seen many examples of it. I fear this legislation will be the same. The stakes, as the Minister has rightly said, are high. We could be revisiting this issue in a couple of weeks time, If we do not get this legislation right, we will not have a proper vehicle for dealing with the challenges ahead. We need to provide the time to get this right.

Fine Gael's view on Anglo Irish Bank is clear. We have articulated it from the start. We do not believe we should be recapitalising with €1.5 billion of State money in the idle hope that trust in that bank could be restored, that it is a credible banking model for the long-term future, or that it had a loan book it could manage in such a way that it would become a powerhouse for lending in the future to export businesses. We did not see that strategy as viable. That is why we took a view from the outset that we should not put €1.5 billion into Anglo Irish Bank and that we should take it into State ownership so that we could, on behalf of the taxpayer, control the risk to which we taxpayers were exposed by the guarantee given on 30 September. That has been our view.

I support nationalisation because it is an element of meeting our requirement. However, there are other elements I do not see here on which I want assurances. One is whether we are unwittingly extending the guarantee we gave to depositors to a new tranche of people who were not covered by the guarantee heretofore. It seems there are categories, amounting to at least €10 billion, who were not guaranteed before, and there is another €12 billion in respect of which the guarantee only goes to 2010. There is a worry that the taxpayer is now in a position that he or she effectively will be offering a guarantee to these that was never there before.

The Minister said that creditors, including bondholders of Anglo Irish, can be assured that it will continue to service its obligations and will repay its debts at maturity. Nowhere in this Bill or in the Minister's statement, however, is it made clear that they will only be repaid if the management of the loan book is delivering 100% of the value so we can be in a position to meet their risk capital — that we are not offering some new taxpayers' guarantee by the back door to people who entered into risky investments with their eyes open.

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