Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

That is not the way it should be. The situation that has blown up in the faces of hundreds and thousands of people arises in the context of a situation where we were told on many occasions that our banks were the best capitalised in the world. Yet a High Court judge said yesterday he was astonished at the laxity of approval of loans including one for €550 million. As leader of the Opposition, I attended, with party colleagues, a briefing by representatives of Anglo Irish Bank in November 2008 where we were given so-called facts that were completely and utterly untrue in respect of the work being carried out by that bank. When I asked whether there was anything else we should know about the bank, I was told there was not. Three weeks later serious revelations began to unfold.

The Fianna Fáil Party is being branded in the public perception as having been involved in some type of secret deal because of a fear of the truth that will emerge in respect of the regulatory and policy failures that occurred, many of which were conducted in the course of the tenure in government of the Taoiseach's party. If the Taoiseach is interested in rectifying that he should look to the inquiry conducted by the late Jim Mitchell in regard to DIRT. That committee worked on the basis of findings from the then Comptroller and Auditor General and did its work in a timely fashion and with great cost effectiveness. This House should not be sidelined to irrelevancy by a Government publication that says it can only talk about issues long after they have been considered by a commission of investigation set up by the Government.

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