Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

As Deputy Rabbitte says, the Minister is probably taking this approach to avoid nationalisation. The other reason, which is not unrelated, is that if the Minister does not pay over the odds for the assets or the loans on the properties, he will not have enough money to recapitalise the banks so he could fail in that respect and find that he is back to square one because the legal guarantees and the recapitalisation of AIB and Bank of Ireland did not work.

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