Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

That is a very good question. An interesting aspect which nobody appears to be teasing out is that our banks were loaned hundreds of billions of euro by the European banks. One would have thought that in the commercial world the lender, namely, the European banks, with all of their risk analyses, would have been able to ascertain that they were creating loss situations for themselves. The obvious question arises as to how it happened that they got it so wrong and managed to buy worthless paper in the US that has no asset backing whatsoever. I will explain later my understanding of how it happened. At least what the European banks invested in here, while impaired, are asset backed.

My understanding is that the reason the banks did this is because much of what they off-lay is off-layed a further 50 or 60 steps. The reality is - this is an issue we need to examine in the context of our banking system - that the situation not alone in Ireland's financial world but the financial world in general had become so complex that nobody really knew where the aggregate risk was. An issue that needs to be examined not alone in Ireland but worldwide is that of bubble creations by banks and the purchase of worthless assets. One would have expected that those banks would have had the expertise in risk management to manage their own affairs.

I can understand the Opposition wanting to engage in the blame game. Examining how things happened-----

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