Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The only other country that has anything remotely close to such a difficulty is Ireland. All of the international commentators, including the IMF, are telling us that the cost to the Irish taxpayer, to the public and to future generations of dealing with the banking crisis will be greater here than it will be anywhere else. We have a crisis. What the Government is doing is not working, it is costing more and more. The money we should be committing to building our schools, hospitals and infrastructure, providing broadband and doing those things a growing economy will need in the future will now be committed to sorting out the banks.

First of all they got €8.5 billion upfront for recapitalisation and God knows now how many billion the Government will spend buying up the bad debts. If the Government overestimates the amount it pays, and it has mentioned discounting them, we will pick up the tab. If it underestimates it, the banks must deal with it, meaning they will come back looking for more money from the State. Either way the public must pay for it.

The Taoiseach can quote one economist who supports his position. There are 20 economists, from a range of opinion, not all of whom would support the Labour Party by any stretch of the imagination, who are all saying that the sensible thing to do now, the most cost-effective way to deal with the banks in the interests of the public is to nationalise them for a period and to bring them into public ownership so they can be restored to good order before putting them back on the market.

This is not an ideological decision or a position taken in the past. It is a more sensible and cost-effective way of dealing with the problem than what the Government is doing, pumping money it does not have, money that must be raised from future generations of taxpayers, into the banks in a blind attempt to get them out of the hole they are in and, in the meantime, the banks are not functioning as they should in a good economy; they are not providing the credit, lending and good facilities ordinary businesses need to keep going with the result that businesses are going to the wall and jobs are being lost.

I agree with Deputy Kenny. This is about more than the expression of political positions, this is about the public interest and in the public interest I appeal to the Taoiseach not to stick with the position he has taken until now on the banks. I believe that he will eventually come to the position advocated now by the Labour Party and the sooner he comes to that position, the better it will be for the country, for business, for banks and for economic recovery.

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