Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Labour Party for sharing time with me and, on behalf of my party, I support the motion before the House today.

An extract from an article in the Financial Times of 25 April reads:

The problems of banks are much deeper than were then acknowledged and the destabilisation of the economy has happened anyway. Government now provides taxpayers' money to financial businesses in previously unimaginable quantities. But there is no control over the use of the money, no insistence on structural reform or management reorganisation, no safeguarding of the essential economic functions of the financial services industry and no accountability for the damage that has been done.

This was written by John Kay of the Financial Times about the British Labour Party's love affair with the banks across the water but his description of the British Government's approach sounds remarkably similar to the approach taken here by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. Since the time of the so-called "cheapest bailout" in the world last September, the Government has made five attempts to deal with the banking crisis and has failed on each occasion. Between botched recapitalisation last December, the infamous nationalisation of the toxic Anglo-Irish Bank, or the most recent adventure in the form of NAMA, the Government is pouring away billions of euros of Irish taxpayers' money, without any accountability, any clear direction and without a plan, in an attempt to reorganise the banking system.

However, this is not Monopoly money with which the Government can play around but is based on our public finances, namely, the taxes of the next generation of working people. The Government has cut back on numerous programmes such as special needs teachers, temporary workers in our health services and, recently, early child benefit, in an attempt to balance the books. While it is doing this and reminding us of the difficult times we face, it is giving unprecedented quantities of public money to our zombie banks, those same banks that told us they would die before accepting recapitalisation. These are the banks that refuse to provide credit to our SMEs, that ignore requests to return their billions of euro in pensions and bonuses, that dragged their heels in bringing wholesale changes in personnel. The Government has prioritised this sector and the clique that controls it over our children with special needs, our pensioners who are dependent on their Christmas bonus and over patients in our hospitals. Many of this clique are now taking their retirement. Even today, there was Ulster Bank's chief economist who will now go off with his pals to play golf and meet people for lunch while we are left with the devastating mess the banks created.

The public's confidence in this Government's ability to address the financial crisis is at rock bottom. The public, very many independent economists and the Members on this side of the House are opposed to the establishment of NAMA because the taxpayer will be made to pay for the reckless lending and borrowing of bankers and property speculators. The Government's approach, namely, to buy distressed assets while ensuring that our banks are adequately capitalised while resisting full nationalisation, is contradictory. By paying too little for the bad assets in the banks' loan books, the banks will require further recapitalisation which will inevitably lead to further public ownership of the banks. By paying over the odds for assets that have rapidly decreased in value, the taxpayer will assume major losses. Twenty senior economists recently stated, "With €90 billion in loans to be purchased, the consequences to the taxpayer of overpaying the assets by 10 to 30 per cent are truly appalling".

Even if the Government has its way in creating NAMA and buying bad debt with public money, we will still be left with little or no stake in the banks at the end of this fiasco. The Government has provided no real justification for resisting nationalisation. The truth is that it is opposed to public ownership of our banks because of ideology and ultra-conservatism. There is no evidence that public banks will be denied interbank liquidity yet the Government insists that the banks should not be nationalised. What makes this all the more alarming is that, while it opposes public involvement in the banks, it is more than willing to use public money to bail them out.

The Minister has not been given a mandate to do whatever he likes, thereby crippling this country with massive debts. He never mentioned this in his election manifesto in 2007. The Taoiseach abused his position by fuelling the property bubble which led to the collapse in this market in the first place.

Although a change in direction would look like another U-turn I urge the Government to listen to the Opposition and scrap the NAMA project once and for all. I hope I am wrong, but I truly believe that NAMA will be the worst mistake we have ever made. If my fears are realised the Government will go down in history as the worst Government in the history of the State. The backbenchers and the Green Party - who are now nothing more than Progressive Democrats who like trees - must recognise that they are just as responsible for this mess as the Government is. The Green Party can no longer deny responsibility for this economic crisis. It now presides over a regime of cutbacks matched only by those made by the former Tánaiste, Michael McDowell, and his colleagues in the Progressive Democrats. The Green Party has changed its policy completely from that it adopted when it was on this side of the House claiming to aspire to social justice. Its true colours are coming out now and they are certainly not green.

While the Minister allows our banks to cripple us and occupy all of the Government's focus, the real economy - our SMEs and working people - is being ignored. These people are going to the wall and workers are being laid off. The dole queues resemble those of the 1980s. All of us in this House can remember those terrible times.

The Government should deal with the banking issue once and for all. It must broaden its focus to include retention and creation of jobs. It must take on board some of the proposals made by parties on this side of the House. I refer in particular to the Sinn Féin pre-budget submission which set out a strategy for helping SMEs to retain jobs. It is obviously much easier to retain jobs than to create them. The Government has shown no inclination to do this. It is little wonder that people outside this House are disillusioned with politics and political leadership here.

The Government, which is charged with administering the State in this Parliament, totally ignores the Opposition. This is a time when I would have expected the Government to declare it would discuss these matters openly and sensibly and come to a type of consensus on what we can do to resolve this matter, if that is at all possible. Instead, we have a situation where the Government does not even accept a simple amendment to its Finance Bill.

I look forward to the debate on that Bill tomorrow. I commend the Labour Party on bringing this motion before the House today and giving us an opportunity to debate it on the floor of the House.

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