Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

When we came into the House today after the Christmas recess and all the dramatic events that have happened in banking not just in Ireland but also elsewhere, I had expected the Government to show a clear sense of action and purpose to address the key issues facing the banking sector. We are debating a Bill on the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, but the Minister is missing the main point. The most important issue at stake and the goal, towards which Government policy should be directed, if I may advise the Minister, is the protection, sustainability and regulation of our two large banks. They are historic banks that have existed for longer than the Dáil — certainly the Bank of Ireland has. We need those two banks for every town and village and pretty much most of the businesses in the country. We want to sustain the bulk of the jobs in the country.

It gives me no pleasure — I am sure it gives no Member of this House pleasure — to see how the markets have reacted. Fianna Fáil is the party that believes in the markets and does not much like to regulate them. One can live by the market and die by the market. I believe the markets are wrong about both of those banks. They are sustainable banks with a strong future and are critical to employment in the economy. I believe the other two banks covered by the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act, over and above Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish Nationwide Building Society, also have a future.

Why did the Minister not come here today with a clear statement of his overall strategy on the critical parts of the economy and the tens of thousands of jobs that depend on those banks? Although we are here today to discuss Anglo Irish Bank, it is extraordinary that the Minister has not taken the opportunity to set out a strategy about sustaining our whole banking system, sustaining credit and sustaining employment. While the contents of the Bill are important, they are nowhere near as important as the sustainable future of our two big banks. The Minister needs to express confidence. He also needs to take aside the other Ministers who appear on radio and give them a little lesson in what is important in this economy in terms of people's jobs. Yesterday morning I listened to one Minister, whom I personally respect. I felt like weeping for the country and the people who would lose their jobs by letting out people who are ill-informed, ill-advised and carry no brief for explaining what is happening in our banking system.

I heard the Taoiseach express his concern that we might have loose talk costing jobs today just as in a war loose talk might cost lives. Let me talk to the Taoiseach about loose talk. The Labour Party has acted with absolute concern for sustaining credit and jobs. It gives us no pleasure that so much of our analysis was correct. We were doing it simply on the basis of reports and information in the newspapers. At times it feels as if we need to read tea leaves to make out what is going on.

The Dáil is being asked to make major and far-reaching fundamental financial economic decisions, not about our biggest banks, although we hope the Minister has proposals for them somewhere in his back pocket because he will need them, but about a significant bank that grew as an aberration alongside a property bubble. There is no doubt that it produced extraordinary results. However, it was part of a property bubble and dealings on the Stock Exchange which are not to be recommended — a point to which I will return shortly.

The Taoiseach sent a letter to Deputy Gilmore last night. In April 2006 I made a statement addressed at the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen. I said that the contract for difference was a form of gambling on the stock market where the purchaser does not even buy a share, but simply an entitlement to the gains or losses on a share over a particular period. It was a particularly lucrative activity for those involved in that form of Stock Exchange gambling. While the Minister can confirm it to us on the record of the House, I understand that central to the events in Anglo Irish Bank is that one particular group — the Quinn Group, including Seán Quinn, members of his family and members of the group of companies — attempted to buy approximately a quarter of the bank through contracts for difference. That attempt to buy a quarter of the bank was an extraordinary event about which our regulatory system made no comment. In the annals of capitalism and speculation that was an extraordinary event. That then morphed into an acquisition of 15% of the shares in the company, sustained in part by transfers from an insurance company owned by that group of companies, which employs many thousands of people and has had a highly successful diversified business history here. Nobody in the regulatory system made any reference to any of these issues. The Minister today made no reference to them except in the vaguest way to the actions of the former chief executive and former chairman of the bank.

I felt sorry for the shareholders gathered in the Mansion House last week, many of whom had invested their pensions in the bank. Self-employed people, including car mechanics, doctors and solicitors, got a considerable amount of advice, particularly from former Deputy McCreevy in telling people to look after their pension funds, that one of the safer places to invest a pension was in a bank. I felt very sorry for those people. I accept they took the risk and we know about risk. Let us get real. These are Irish people. We know many of the investors are foreign and many are institutions. Let us not forget that there are many smaller investors who are much poorer as a consequence of what has happened in the banks. It would be wrong to have this debate — even in the short time available — without some reference to them.

When the Taoiseach seeks to remind the Labour Party to be careful and watch its mouth regarding loose talk, I was probably the first person in the House to talk about toxic debt, toxic loans, contracts for difference and turning the Irish Stock Exchange into a gambling casino. That policy was facilitated in respect of Anglo Irish Bank because it was the darling child of the Celtic tiger. Once upon a time — not very long ago — in this country we had a man called "Ansbacher man". "Ansbacher man" seems to have had a son called "Anglo man", and the principal and first son of "Anglo man" is Mr. "Seánie" FitzPatrick. It is interesting that the former Taoiseach never talked about Mr. FitzPatrick, but he used that personal name that we read in the writings of people like Padraig Pearse — not just "Seán" but "Seánie". It is cultural. It indicates the closeness and togetherness of the family — the family of party, of business, of country. Those who are not in the family may be critical, but we need to keep our mouths shut tight because we might damage this national family of Seanie and his friends, as described by Deputy Ahern. Will we ever get an explanation of what happened in this bank with regard to the extraordinary attempt to acquire a quarter of the bank through contracts for difference, which morphed into a 15% shareholding? Will we get an explanation for the fact that Mr. FitzPatrick, over a period of eight years, was able to warehouse his loans as a director of the bank — running from €87 million to more than €120 million — with Irish Nationwide Building Society, which was also one of the covered institutions? Reputation is everything in banking.

I am sorry that the actions of this Government — the four or five attempts to come to grips with these incredibly challenging events — have failed. I do not deny these are challenging events. I do not think the Taoiseach is responsible for them all and I do not think he created the international situation. Nobody is blaming him for that. However, the Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil carry a unique responsibility for the property bubble that they blew out of all proportion long after some of the more intelligent, sensible and honest people in the party were privately telling us it was too far, too fast, too much. In September, when I pointed out difficulties with the bank guarantee scheme, various people in the Fianna Fáil Party accused me of not wearing the green jersey. For God's sake, can we get real? We must have a proper debate about protecting the key elements of our economy——

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