Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The benefit of the commission of investigation approach is that it provides tribunal-like powers without tribunal-like costs and tribunal-like timespans, which is what the public and everyone in this House is interested in. Deputy Gilmore quoted the Governor of the Central Bank. He indicated at the time that what we want to do is put the finger on any processes and structures in our entire system that contributed to this, namely, the background and causes to the financial problems we have. That is what we are seeking to do. Since then we have been involved in taking decisions, all of which have been opposed, with the exception of the guarantee which was supported by Fine Gael, a guarantee which obtained state aid approval from the European Union, precisely because and for the sole reason that it was necessary to avoid what it said would a meltdown of the financial markets in this country. That is what the European Commission said. That is how necessary it was, although it was opposed by Deputy Gilmore at the time.

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