Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

This is dither and delay while businesses go to the wall and are starved of the credit they need, banks are in trouble and the domestic confidence of consumers and businesses and international confidence in the country is eroding all of the time. I asked the Taoiseach a number of very simple questions, namely, when will it be set up, when will we see the legislation, when will it start work and what is delaying it? All he has given me is a long ramble and rigmarole about all the committees and advisory bodies and consideration.

The truth of the matter, which is frightening for the House and the country, is that the Government, which is charged with trying to get this country out of the economic difficulties it is in, part of which is sorting out the banks, clearly does not know what it is doing from one week to the next. It does not have a clue.

See this speech in context