Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I will conclude by dealing with an important issue. In restoring integrity to our banking system, those responsible for acts that have brought it into disrepute and responsible for engaging in fraudulent activities that may well require to be dealt with pursuant to the criminal law should be fully and properly investigated.

In the context of decisions made by the Government that have been brought before this House and which relate to issues such as the bank guarantee scheme, recapitalisation, and the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, I am bemused by Green Party Deputies and a Green Party Senator who call constantly for investigations and talk about bankers. This is because two Green Party Members sit in Cabinet. What did they know about some of these events? Were they informed in Cabinet that €300 million was used to enable ten anonymous individuals to purchase what was known as the "Quinn overhang" in Anglo Irish Bank, that this money was provided by that bank and that this falsely and fraudulently held up the share price of the bank on the stock exchange? When did the Green Party Ministers discover this? Did they know it in July and were they informed by the Minister for Finance? Did they know it before 29 September when the bank guarantee scheme was announced? Did they know it before there was an announcement of recapitalisation, which ultimately evolved into the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank?

These are important issues and they go to the heart of our banking system. They go to the heart of the international financial community's view of our banking system and Government, the credibility and honesty of our banking system and the competence of those in Government who are now charged with tidying up the mess they are partially responsible for creating.

This is a very narrow debate and, unfortunately, I have only ten minutes within which to speak. There is a broad range of initiatives that should be taken now to create employment and protect jobs. We should be discussing these in this House. However, the Government seems incapable of producing a broad social and economic policy that gives people hope that we can climb out of the pit in which we now find ourselves. There is a need to go beyond levies and to apply fairness to the measures being implemented. There is a need to stop attacking the most vulnerable, such as the over-70s, the intellectually disabled and a broad range of others, whom the Government seems to have targeted to date and whom it seems to regard as the easy and soft target. It is in respect of these people that the Government has implemented measures that have saved or are designed to save small sums of money but which have no overall impact on or relevance to getting the economy working again. We need to have a working economy and to re-employ people. We need urgent initiatives so the unemployed, whose number is growing, can be retrained and educated such that they can be re-employed and not left on the dole queues over the coming years.

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