Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I am not so sure that it is of such insignificance that it has entirely escaped the Taoiseach's mind because of what a commentator, whom I wish to quote, said at the time. John McManus, writing in the business opinion section in The Irish Times on 3 April 2006 days after the decision was made, stated:

The idea that the Minister for Finance should actually condone favourable tax treatment of this type of investment over plain vanilla share buying is hard to defend.

And the fact that between 20 and 50 per cent of the trades done in Dublin are done via CFDs should actually set the alarm bells ringing in Merrion Street. The Department should be asking themselves what will happen to all these leveraged investors when the inevitable down turn in the market comes.

That was very prescient because now we know what has happened to all those investors and to the banks now that the downturn has come. The overhang of Quinn shares in Anglo Irish Bank, which the Minister described yesterday as causing instability in the bank, brought about a situation where that bank ended up having to be nationalised, where our entire banking system has been put at risk, where repeated efforts have had to be made to restore confidence in it and where tens of thousands of people in our economy are losing their jobs as a result of a lack of credit being extended to them and as a result of what is happening in banking and the economy. That is the consequence of it.

That is what the Taoiseach was being warned about by this commentator in 2006. It was also what he was being warned about by Deputy Burton in 2006 when she raised this very issue with him. The Taoiseach this morning and Ministers put on media over the past few days are trying to spin the line that something untoward was going on in the banks, that they discovered it only lately, that they are trying to sort it out and that this is the Government acting tough with the banks. The fact of the matter is that the Taoiseach's stewardship, as Minister for Finance, has contributed to the hole we are now in economically. The Taoiseach was at the heart of it.

The Revenue Commissioners decided these things should be taxed. Up to 40% or 50% of transactions were being done in this way. It was a form of gambling. These people were taking risks and gambling with the economy and shares. Why would they not do so? They did not have to pay tax on it. No stamp duty was being imposed. If they had to buy the shares, they would have had to pay the stamp duty. The Revenue Commissioners said they should have done so but the Taoiseach responded to lobbying from somewhere about which he has yet to tell us which reversed the Revenue Commissioners' decision and they carried on partying, as Charlie McCreevy would say. Now we know the result. The banks and the economy are in trouble and the Taoiseach was the Minister for Finance charged with the stewardship of this. At the very least, he was unwise in the decisions he made and, at worst, he was not doing his job.

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