Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

——no money for child benefit, no money for paying wages, no money to help people in trouble with their mortgages and no money to take initiatives to get people back to work, but there is no shortage of money for the banks. Let us bear in mind what has been already done. Some €4 billion has been put into a delinquent bank called Anglo Irish Bank and €7 billion has been provided for Bank of Ireland and AIB. According to the Government's business plan for NAMA, this exercise will involve overpayment for assets by another €7 billion. That amounts to €18 billion, which would pay the Christmas bonus for 90 years. It is equivalent to five times the adjustment in the public finances about which the Minister will talk in the budget, which will cause everyone a great deal of grief for the next number of years. It is almost as if this is not real money. It is €18 billion of real money without getting into whether more money will be needed for further recapitalisation of the banks or the interest being added to the cost of the State's borrowing. The Government wants to get all of this done and dusted by 3.30 p.m., yet it will turn around to people in bad circumstances and tell them that there is no money. All of this is because of Fianna Fáil's mismanagement of the economy.

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