Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

If one went back to the spring and summer of 2007, was the Government doing its job? If the Minister for Finance was doing his job and if the Department of Finance had been awake and was paying attention to what was happening in the banking system, there would have been action that would have diminished the level of the crisis in Ireland by a considerable margin. If the Minister feels that we are sceptical about the regulator, it is because we have the experience of those fine gentlemen coming in and telling us repeatedly, as in the Minister's draft report to Brussels, that the fundamentals were sound and that every Irish bank was wonderful.

There is so much liability being transferred to the Irish taxpayer, €54 billion, that to go along with the old ways without transparency is a huge mistake on the part of the Minister. He has put himself forward on previous occasions as being somewhat enlightened in terms of opening up Government to transparency and oversight but he is anything but that in this case. I regret the approach he is taking because Irish taxpayers will pay for it.

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