Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The directors appointed by me, as Minister for Finance, went into the bank and conducted a review and presented a true and fair view of the half-yearly return. We have had to act on that. We are not here to discuss that, but to discuss the section. Deputy Noonan said matters of great moment are being decided but the information was not being put before the House. The information is that no decision has been taken with regard to the extension of the guarantee.

It is worth noting the terms of the Paris declaration:

To this aim, Governments would make available for an interim period and on appropriate commercial terms, directly or indirectly, a Government guarantee, insurance, or other similar arrangements of new medium-term (up to 5 years) bank senior debt issuance. Depending on domestic market conditions in each country, actions could be targeted at some specific and relevant types of debt issuance.

Obviously, the debt issuance remains within the senior debt issuance category. This is what was stated in the Paris declaration last year and that is what we are talking about this evening. We are talking about a section that empowers the Government to act upon that, in the context where the following European Governments have adopted guarantee schemes: Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. When Deputy Burton refers to the sovereign exposure of the Irish Government, these are exposures that have been adopted by all of these other governments and sovereign states in the European Union.

The total maximum volume of crisis measures so far approved by the Commission's schemes and ad hoc measures, taken together, entail an amount of some €3,000 billion. The idea that this is somehow unique-----

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