Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

Yes, but money has been loaned to the extent of €70 billion and we do not know what return will be received on any of this amount. We do not know the detail of any of this. The House is making a decision on behalf of the taxpayers who elected us. We are representatives, we are Teachtaí Dála who represent the citizens of this country. How can we possibly buy a pig in a poke? We must know the detail of what we are embarking on before we do so. To follow bad money with good money is not an option. It is certainly not an option to say that we are going to go down this road, pass this legislation and there will be no consequences, good, bad or indifferent, for those people who brought us to this state. There is prima facie evidence that fraud has been committed and prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. The very least both the Minister and the House owe the taxpayer is to inform taxpayers, shareholders and those with pension money, the ordinary citizen, that we will get to the bottom of this or that we will use every mechanism in our power to do so. Other people have argued that CAB, the Criminal Assets Bureau should be called in. I would have no problem with this suggestion but the difficulty seems to be that it is white collar crime. The onus is on the individual who is targeted to provide the information and to provide the evidence of where the funding has gone and where the liability is. The onus is not the other way around as is the normal rule of law.

We are not dealing with a few thousand euro here but rather with hundreds of millions which have been misused by people who were responsible for using it correctly. It is essential that we get to the bottom of this and we would be doing a very bad day's work if we left this House without doing everything in our power to get to the bottom of it.

A toxic bank situation exists and the problem seems to become more serious every time we look into it. I refer to the explanatory memorandum of the Bill:

. . .the Minister, having consulted with the directors of Anglo Irish Bank, the Governor of the Central Bank, and the Financial Regulator, has formed the opinion that the exercise of these functions is necessary to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy of the State and to preserve the capacity of Anglo Irish Bank to continue as a going concern.

What is meant by "remedy a serious disturbance in the economy"? We are in a recession. Those are the same people the Minister consulted the last time when he produced the guarantee. They would say, would they not, that Anglo Irish Bank should be bailed out again? Following on the guarantee we will bail it out in the form of nationalisation because the situation has deteriorated to a further extent. What else would they say? They are the only people the Minister has admitted to having consulted on this matter. Of course, they want to be bailed out if the bank is going to the wall and liabilities are high. The Financial Regulator has not covered himself in glory either. The consultations must be much wider.

The banks are not the economy. The Government's priority should not be saving a private bank, one that has misguided and mismanaged itself to a fraudulent extent. The priority should be in ensuring the services the banks provided are maintained. Anglo Irish Bank, as it stands, is in no position to do this and there is no sign of it being able to do so in the future. The focus should be on the main banks, Allied Irish Banks and the Bank of Ireland, to ensure they are in a position to provide cashflow that small and medium-sized enterprises require. These enterprises are the backbone of our economy and ensure jobs are created and maintained. The Minister claimed he has a vision for the banks to serve these pillars of the economy but the banks are not doing so even with the European Investment Bank deciding it would provide funding of €30 billion to Irish, as well as other, banks for this purpose.

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