Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Citizen journalism is one of the great, new extensions of freedom brought about through the Internet. Thank God we have it in the context of our banking crisis.

Why do we not trust the Minister and the Department of Finance on this matter? Over the summer I requested information under freedom of information legislation on the dealings between the Department and Anglo Irish Bank in the run-up to the crisis in 2008 and up to the date of its nationalisation. The Minister will recall that Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised in January of this year, although he and Fianna Fáil had declared previously that it was fine. In the limited freedom of information documents that I received - because the Department decided to refuse most of the information - one dated 8 January 2009 is a draft to be sent to the European Commission on various Council regulations dealing with banking, says that Anglo Irish Bank is niche market rather than broad market. That is the Minister's document.

The document states also that there has been very close engagement and liaison between the Department of Finance and Anglo Irish Bank on an ongoing basis since it executed the legal instruments to join the guarantee scheme. It says that Anglo Irish Bank is considered a "fundamentally sound" institution. That was a matter of hours and days before the bank was nationalised to prevent it collapsing. The document goes on to state on page 39 that the assessment by Merrill Lynch supports the position that Anglo Irish Bank is "fundamentally sound". That is a company to whom the Minister told me yesterday he paid €7.4 million in fees to be told that. If he went up to Doheny and Nesbitt's and had a pint with the drinking economists they could have given him an educated insight into how Anglo Irish Bank was doing for far less than €7.4 million.

Hours and days before the nationalisation, page 40 of the document shows, Anglo Irish Bank was considered "fundamentally sound". The reason I refer to these documents is because they show the thinking of the senior officials in the Department in preparing an important document for the European Commission. That was the professional advice of a company, which the Minister acknowledged yesterday had been paid €7.4 million for advice on banking and bank capitalisation. If ever there was a case where institutions of the State needed oversight and information to go into the public domain this is it, not to undermine those institutions but rather for sensible people, whether economists in the Doheny and Nesbitt's school having their pint or ordinary people having a discussion around the breakfast table to be in a position to say: "Hold on, that does not appear entirely sensible to me, that Merrill Lynch, which is being paid €7.4 million should be putting into a document that this bank is fundamentally sound, or that senior officials who are not identified should be writing to the European Commission to say that this bank is fundamentally sound, and more than that, to give an opinion that this bank is niche market rather than broad market."

The Minister included the bank in the guarantee on the basis that it was systemically important and he continued to defend that position last week. It goes to show that someone somewhere in the Department of Finance did have the intellectual insight to say Anglo Irish Bank is a niche bank rather than a systemically important bank. Yet the type of arrangement-----

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