Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

What is in the interest of the country's reputation is that we proceed with our recapitalisation in order to stabilise the banking system, and for the debate to take place in this House on all aspects of the matter. It is open to anyone in the House to raise any issue.

For the purpose of clarification, I want to make the point again that general governance issues were arising with regard to Anglo Irish Bank which brought about a situation in which the nationalisation of the bank was imperative. There was no detail available to me at that time about specific matters. What we were talking about was governance issues which were sapping market confidence. We needed to deal with that issue and that was the basis upon which we made those decisions.

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