Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I could understood if the shed cost €3 million or €10 million. However, given the nature of the economy these people ran, it cost €30 million. The shed is lovely, but how and why did we spend €30 million on it? It was a spending spree and money was no object. The attitude was if there was a problem, throw money at it and do not address the underlying problem.

Political priorities took precedence over economic reality at crucial points. For this alone the Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen, must take responsibility for the state of our country and for this alone he deserves to be shown the door. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, have only one agenda, that is, to escape the fate that has befallen Mr. FitzPatrick, Mr. Sheehy and the others who have had to walk the plank for their capricious errors. The purpose of the debate is to demand that they too deserve the same ignominy of dismissal and public shame.

I refer to two specific issues that demonstrate the incapacity of this bunch of Ministers to make sound judgements. Last October the UK Government decided to reduce its rate of VAT to 15%. At the same time the Minister for Finance, Deputy Lenihan, did exactly the opposite. He raised the standard rate here by a half point, an amount infinitesimal such that in the total scheme of the budget it made no difference. However by that action he dealt a hammer blow to the retail industry in Ireland. He destroyed thousands of jobs in retail and services. He was warned of dire consequences from this side of the Dáil and by the representatives of the retail sector. He pressed on regardless, oblivious and even indifferent to the damage he was about to cause. He knows better now and has admitted his error but the damage cannot now be easily undone. This example illustrates his profound lack of judgment and his stubborn refusal to take advice.

The Anglo Irish Bank debacle is another case in point, of much greater importance and the cause of much greater lasting damage. I repeat what I stated on 30 September last. The blanket guarantee was issued in the hours before Anglo Irish Bank's accounting year-end for the sole purpose of protecting that well connected entity from collapse. Today we must find billions of euro, some €4 billion now and possibly a further €3 billion later this year, for no other purpose than to sustain the delusion and the pretence that the bank has some chance of a viable future. We are saddled with the guarantee and the chickens are now coming home to roost with shocking consequences.

It could have been different. Of course depositors were entitled to a guarantee and I stated as much on the record of the Dáil some weeks before the guarantee was introduced. They still are so entitled, but what was given that fateful day went far beyond that. Bank debts, including those to bond holders, became sovereign debts, solemnly guaranteed by the State. Now we must pay truly sizable sums for that failure of policy with no confidence that the situation of the potentially viable banks could improve.

The sorry state of Anglo Irish Bank today is not an argument against nationalisation but an argument against an ill-advised blanket guarantee in respect of the banks. The overhang of the guaranteed bonds has the State in a bind now and is causing us real pain in renegotiating our genuinely sovereign debt requirements.

Now we face the NAMA horror and I appeal to the Minister, Deputy Lenihan, to think afresh because he must be aware that the public is frightened at the prospect that comes with NAMA. Yesterday, at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service, the Chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, Mr. O'Connor, stated it has more than €17 billion in impaired loans which will go directly to NAMA and an unspecified amount, which may be of the same order, in associated and potentially impaired loans. That is the case of only one bank which, for reasons we have never been able to fathom, Fianna Fáil has described as systemically important. The only systemic importance of Anglo Irish Bank is to Fianna Fáil, because it was the Fianna Fáil developers' bank. That is the only reason that Fianna Fáil was unable and unwilling to address the Anglo Irish Bank issue.

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