Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I do not agree with Deputy Gilmore. With regard to the job losses he mentioned, there were also 250 jobs lost in Athlone and 200 lost in Dundalk within the past week. That aside, the core of the Deputy's question relates to banking policy. The Labour Party idea was to proceed with nationalisation of the banks 12 months ago and order a huge write-down of the value of the banks' property loans. The scale of the write-down would have been arbitrary, as the loans would not have been individually valued. That action would have forced the State to immediately recapitalise the banks to plug the large hole that proposal would have created in the banks' balance sheets. The funding position for the State and banks last year was far worse than it is currently; therefore, the costs of plugging that hole would have been greater. That would have been an expensive mistake for the country to make.

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