Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I will leave that out.

I also wish to raise a question under section 218, which concerns the Minister for Finance trying to insert himself between the Comptroller and Auditor General and his reporting to the Committee of Public Accounts or to this House. I remind him that the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General is a constitutional office and I do not understand how the Minister can bring in a provision that permits him to censor the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. It is a breach of the constitutional convention and makes the Comptroller and Auditor General an agent of the Executive rather than the Dáil, as the Constitution envisages.

I also wish to raise the question of democratic oversight of this proposal. It is one of the areas in which the Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, has used his conciliatory skills. He said he would agree to many things before the debate started. It is plain he has no intention of agreeing to any of them, but he has the public convinced that if only the Opposition would come into the parlour the problem would be solved and that we have no idea how agreeable a chap he is. I want to hear the Minister's views on democratic oversight.

How did he manage to convince the public that he would chose the Honohan amendment? He did not do anything of the kind, but Patrick Honohan is now Governor of the Central Bank and, as such, is muffled and cannot speak out for himself. The Minister, Deputy Lenihan, persuaded the members of the Green Party, who are gullible enough to swallow anything to try and stay where they are, that he would chose the Honohan amendment, which has been explained in the House. Both payments envisaged by the Minister are going to the banks and not the shareholders, which keeps more risk on the balance sheet of the banks than is desirable.

Deputy Ardagh referred to the experience of the DIRT inquiry, the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator and, ten years later, we do not seem to have learned anything. Fianna Fáil will say it learned something. I heard my constituency colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, telling RTE radio about how much he enjoyed the DIRT inquiry when he was on it and all he learned. He was not within an asses' roar of the DIRT inquiry and never had anything to do with it, but that did not stop him.

Whatever the difference between the parties about our respective approaches, there is no doubt, as Deputy Deenihan said earlier, about the momentous character of the decision that has to be made. No budget that has ever come before the Oireachtas and no economic plan or debate in this House has ever compared in significance to the NAMA initiative, as the Minister of State, Deputy Power, has said. It is the biggest gamble ever sponsored by an Irish Government.

There is enormous risk attached to whatever we do and the comprehensive all-embracing character of the blanket guarantee into which the Government was railroaded on 29 September means we are already monstrously exposed. Therefore, there is risk attached to whatever course is taken. The main issue to which the House must turn its attention is how to minimise the cost to the Exchequer while at the same time ensuring that the banks begin to lend again.

It is probably the case that the financial and banking crisis has changed the rules of the game even if we do not yet recognise it. We have probably reached a juncture that threatens fundamental structural change in politics. The coping classes have never felt so challenged, bereft of leadership and disillusioned with politics. Retired people have watched their savings evaporate and their pensions threatened. Many homeowners are in negative equity and more and more face repossession. Professionals are losing their livelihoods as never before, certainly not since the 1930s. Small companies are struggling to stay in business. Banks are not lending and jobs are being lost.

These people have no confidence in this Government. They do not trust the members of the Government, as they believe Ministers coasted in the good times and are now paralysed in the bad times. The people have made up their minds. They agree that the same faces in the Government are directly responsible for the fact that more economic damage has been done to Ireland than to any comparable country. Our Ministers lived on the back of the hog during the boom times, but they headed for the bunker when the bubble burst. They were asleep at the wheel. A small bank was captured and allowed to grow until it threatened our entire banking system. No one shouted stop. The economic crisis had taken hold before the Government woke from its slumber. It has failed to explain the dimensions of the crisis to the people. It is paralysed by the knowledge that it is directly culpable for the fact that the recession is worse in Ireland then anywhere else. The rules have changed. People are looking for leadership and engaging with politics once more. They want to know there is hope for the future. They are sick of stroke politics, golden circles and hereditary seats. They may not yet be persuaded that either or both of the Opposition parties have earned their confidence, but they are certain they want shot of this Government.

There is a structural shift taking place in Irish politics. The old paradigm has broken down. Fianna Fáil believes that if it can survive the next 100 days and keep its head down thereafter, economic recovery elsewhere in the world will eventually restore its God-given mission to govern.

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