Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

He went on to state that there is, however, a statutory process through which an individual or corporate entity acquiring 10% or more of the shares of a bank must notify the authority of their intention to undertake the transaction and seek what was termed "our" private approval. He wrote that in addition, the target institution is also obliged to notify the Regulator. He added that on foot of such a notification the authority is required to determine whether any of those involved in acquiring shares are suitable to be shareholders of the institution in question and that in some cases, where no notification is received, the Regulator may contact the institution to seek confirmation that the transaction does not fall within the foregoing rules and require the institution to have this confirmed by external legal advice. The Government is putting up a straw defence. Those in the Government and in the previous Fianna Fáil Government have been intimately connected in the affairs of this bank, yet the Government continues to withhold the names from the Dáil and, more importantly, from the people of Ireland who are about to be increasingly pauperised, whether public servants or private servants, by the failures of the Government.

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