Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

Let us hope that other agencies of the State will do it. How is it that one can say to a board or, in preparation of documents required by company law, that one has borrowed X amount when one has transferred to oneself and moved on and off the balance sheet ten times that amount?

When I think of the event earlier today, celebrating the First Dáil, and the kind of people who built Ireland, can we recall what we do to someone involved in any kind of misdemeanour regarding the movement of money in a social welfare office or a post office? Look back at all the sanctions imposed on postmasters or postmistresses who made mistakes. Generations of a family worry about what it has done to its reputation.

Now, all of these people are too complicated for Mr. Hurley, who has the greatest minds in the world working on the future of economics and banking. I do not know how many years ago it was but I remember giving lectures on economics. The idea that a governor of a central bank would not know that all of this was going on is either because he is in a state of mind that all banking is a saintly activity which he cannot possibly touch or that it is so arcane that he cannot understand it. He should have understood it. The fact that he is still there is a disgrace. He should be gone and the Minister should see to it that he is gone.

The Minister is resisting amendments that would allow inspectors to find out what the basis of all of this was so that we might set up an entirely new system. At the same time, Mr. Hurley sits there waiting for the storm to die down so that we can go back to the way it was. No one in the country wants it to go back to the way it was. They want the full lot of sanctions to fall on all those who have damaged us and damaged the name of the country irreparably. They want them to be treated no differently from how the State has treated any other poor person involved in thievery. This is what would happen in a republic. Why should these people be immune from investigation, an inspector or anything else?

When we are finished with them, we still have the business of intelligently structuring a financial system. There might be a lot of dead wood who cannot think like this. Get that dead wood out of the way. This country is full of responsible, morally inclined decent graduates in all of these subjects. Let the inspector in and let us find out what went on. Let us not imagine that these people made mistakes. It is not the malfunction of a system that was working. It is the deliberate, corrupt and dreadful activity of people working a system that was wrong.

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