Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

This gang has to be rescued and bailed out at any price. The Minister uses every device under the sun to hide the cost from angry citizens of the bailout of his gang. We have NAMA, special purpose vehicles, off-balance sheet borrowings and direct injections of scarce capital with no prospect of return. The National Pensions Reserve Fund has been raided to support the rescue and annual interest payments on the money borrowed runs to hundreds of millions. This is the cost we, the people, must pay in the vain hope of getting this gang back to business as before. This set of Ministers has no notion, no vision whatsoever, of an economic revival that has a focus other than the dream of restoring this small group back to the dominant place it had before. That is the real face on display here today. The Government ran the country pretty much entirely for the benefit of this group. Now it plans the budget entirely to pay the cost of the clean up and restore the gang to its commanding position.

It cost us €4 billion to rescue Anglo Irish Bank in 2009, money we had to borrow and pay interest on. The interest cost alone in 2010 for the €4 billion for Anglo Irish Bank will probably be as high as €200 million. That is almost as much as the amount to be raised in cutting child benefit. Another way to look at the cut in child benefit is to say that it is just to pay the interest on the Anglo Irish Bank injection of €4 billion in 2009.

We know from newspaper reports today that there will be more borrowing for this bank and other banks. We hear the banks could need another €9 billion from the State next year - €4.8 billion for AIB, €2.8 for Bank of Ireland and €2 billion for Irish Nationwide Building Society, which is a tiny building society. We are taking €8 billion in toxic debts and we are talking about putting €2 billion into a tiny building society which was meant to help people get mortgages to acquire a home.

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