Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

What lies behind the purpose of this amendment would have the widest possible public support. People have seen a response that suggests the public is beyond understanding what has happened, that the public would not understand but more complicated people would understand. The public understands what happened very well. What the public is communicating to public representatives is that it wants a complete change in culture and some evidence that the Government has taken a decision that what has happened will be exposed, changed and its recurrence made impossible. That is the test of this legislation. Has it sufficient in it to answer the questions, to which the public is rightfully entitled? There are some that might not excite some people who had great responsibility. When asked about the banking system I recall Mr. Hurley, the Governor of the Central Bank, turning to the television camera and saying that some of the best minds in the world were working on it. This was a throwaway remark from someone in an extraordinary position of responsibility not exercised. The idea is that this is out there in the ether with great minds working on it. What had happened is that the Chicago schools model had completely collapsed in respect of the traded economy. A credit crisis had taken place internationally due to the departure of all responsibility and accountability in bad and virtual financial products. On the other side, Ireland under Mr. Hurley's gaze had advanced in creating a property bubble within another bubble and a kind of specialist bank to facilitate the property bubble.

It is a long time since I studied monetary economics but when I heard Anglo Irish Bank described as a crucial part of the Irish banking system and a systemic player, I wondered what textbook this was taken from. There is no comparison between Anglo Irish Bank and the other two main banks. There is a great deal of anxiety in the country to assume that one hopes the illegality, as now seems to be suggested with regard to compliance with auditing and reporting functions, does not prevail in other parts of the banking system.

People ask lay questions such as, in the movement of between €87 million and €124 million in loans, how much is secured in a variety of ways. It is rather like when the drunkard is asked how he spent his money and replying that he was in the pub, then the nightclub and then he met someone and they had a few more. The response is that there was property, equities and the recycling of borrowing into shares purchase involved. Is any of this secured? The House is asked, blindly, to say that we will take this big batch of uncertainty, without any questions being asked, and we will go back to the Mr. Hurley argument and the arrogance of it, to the effect that the public and the House cannot be trusted with the information.

The market knows the information because of the clique that was running the racket. What else is moving money off the balance sheet, putting it onto another balance sheet and shifting it back again but a racket? Apparently this took place under the gaze of, and supposedly with the supervision of, auditing functions. People send us here as politicians and if we are not to be dragged down with it, this is the issue at stake when I hear about the symbolic stuff we do in celebrating the importance of Parliament. People elect us to insist on getting answers to questions that are rightfully in the realm of public knowledge. When someone suggests that this is sensitive information, I could accept that argument if someone said to whom it is sensitive. Is it so sensitive to the markets or so sensitive in terms of what it would reveal? Is it so sensitive in terms of what is paralleled in other parts of the banking system? The message from here should be very simple. Those parts of the banking system that constitute Anglo Irish Bank have behaved disgracefully. What is worse is to say that one cannot answer, that the information cannot be provided and that an inspector must not be allowed to do so.

The public also knows that the person principally responsible for damaging the national interest into future generations, perhaps, in terms of trust and capacity, had the neck to go on radio and television and advise people that social welfare should be cut and that we should reduce public expenditure. The sheer, brazen shamelessness of it.

What I know, having been a sociologist for 20 or 30 years, is what it means for these little circles as they meet around town and play golf together. That is why we had these mummies sitting in a row at the meeting to which people came. The list of those present included the managing director of this, the director of that and the former chief executive officer. A succeeded B, D recommended C and that disgraced clique has not had one word of condemnation from IBEC. IBEC continually harasses teachers, gardaí and those on the frontline of public services. Every second day we get a lecture about the public service from IBEC. From IBEC, what do we get about these people? Total silence because they were the people lunching with them, drinking with them and talking to them. IBEC is silent.

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