Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I am sharing time with Deputy Shatter. The first part of our amendment to the motion condemns the regulatory failures that facilitated a deception of shareholders and the public. I refer to the report of the proceedings of the finance committee, of which I am a member, of 15 July 2008. Mr. Hurley, the Governor of the Central Bank, made the following statement to the committee:

Significant inspections are carried out by the Financial Regulator under our structure. The regulator has significant powers to go into institutions and to inspect and examine their books. On that basis, we can say the banks are well capitalised. We analyse our liquidity arrangements with them on a weekly basis and this suggests there are not issues currently. Arrears on assets are low but one would expect them to increase in a downturn.

This is part of what has been happening on this issue for the last 12 months — misleading information being given to Members of this House, the Government and the public. The Governor of the Central Bank told the Oireachtas joint committee that the Financial Regulator could go into banks and examine their books. If the Financial Regulator had done that, would he not have found the rotten things in our banking system that we are now discovering? Last July, the Governor told us the banks were well capitalised, yet today we are discussing investing €7 billion of taxpayers' money into our two major banks. What is going on? We are being misled on a daily basis. That is a fact, and it is in the record of the proceedings of the committee of which Deputy Fahey and I are members.

The Opposition has been asked on numerous occasions by various Ministers to play a responsible role in dealing with this crisis. I have no problem with doing that because this is our country, and I have as much interest in the success of this country as any other Member of the House. However, how can one help when one is being misled and not given the facts? Today, we are again being asked to accept a Government proposal without any information. It has been hinted that there is more trouble to come from Anglo Irish Bank. Why are we not told? Why do we not know about it? Why are we not told about the other things happening in other banks? Let it all come out on the table and let us try to deal with it.

Who will invest in the banks? What private individual or institution will invest in banks if they do not know the facts about the balance sheet and debts? Nobody would do it. Would anybody in this Chamber invest in a company without knowing the debts or assets of the company? Of course not. However, here we are blindly putting €7 billion into a structure that has not worked in other countries. At least my party, through its spokesperson and leader, has come forward with an alternative suggestion. Let us examine and debate it before rushing to invest €7 billion in something that has not worked to date. If the Government is doing this to try to attract outside investment, it will not work. It can find that out from the Stock Exchange results; they will soon tell whether the system works. We will be dependent on outside investors and the sad thing is that the Government will not give the proposal genuinely put forward by my party a chance to be examined before proceeding with this investment. I recommend strongly to those on the other side of the House that we stop for a moment, think about it and perhaps talk about our proposal to see if there is merit in it.

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