Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

There is a need to deal with this matter because we have limited our bank debt guarantee to September 2010. Five year money securities are becoming available on money markets that we cannot take because we cannot guarantee the banks beyond September 2010. There are other banks in other jurisdictions that can do that because they did not impose the prudent two year restriction that we imposed on ourselves at the time. There are loans that we could take up for five years if we apply the bank guarantee. The best way of ensuring stability in the banking system is to ensure that it has access to funds. Other banks in other jurisdictions are able to tender for these funds because they can apply a bank guarantee to them that we cannot do because we have legislation which restricts it to September 2010.

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