Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

He said it was not going to cost us a penny, then it was going to cost us €1.5 billion. It was announced on the bank holiday weekend when it was hoped people would be at the beach and would not have time to take in the information that it would cost €4,000 million. Another €3.6 billion later, we had €17.9 billion of impaired loans to be transferred over and the same or up to the same in associated impaired loans. The cost to the taxpayer is unbelievable. The experts can only operate where there is a market. The so-called long-term economic value idea of the Government is actually utterly fraudulent and will saddle us, our children and even our grandchildren with debts that could cripple our country's future for decades. The Government cannot proceed on that basis; the public will not stand for it. An asset management strategy will certainly be part of any solution but nationalisation is the better option and that is what the Labour Party has said repeatedly.

Fianna Fáil would have us believe that the ESRI has somehow or other given Fianna Fáil a positive mark for economic management. The ESRI report, the recovery scenario document, states very clearly that of Ireland's €21 billion deficit of this year, one third is due to global factors and two thirds - a total of €14 billion - is due to inappropriate fiscal policies, what the ESRI describes as the structural deficit, which is the legacy of unwise fiscal policies of recent years. This is the opinion of the ESRI on the Government's economic management. Those guys on the Government benches are the masters of spin, the masters of denial, the masters of false claims.

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