Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Second, what we are doing today is to provide, as a result of the independent Financial Regulator's requirement to have best practice in terms of the emerging capital ratios required for investor confidence in our banks, that they would be fit for purpose and that the capitalisation that is required arising from that will in fact reflect the maintenance of capital ratios which will enable us to move forward in our banking system.

What is clearly the case is that the banking policy, if one could call it that, which the Deputy has continued to espouse in regard to one of those banks would have meant having to find €65 billion of funding immediately because of his refusal to deal with the situation in a rational way. It is because of this that the Government will be coming forward at 5 p.m., through the Minister for Finance, with a comprehensive statement about putting our banking system onto a proper footing because the NAMA operation has enabled us to deal with banks in a differentiated way. It has enabled us to bring forward the losses with which the banks have to deal. As a result, the recapitalisation programme can go ahead, based on the assessment of the independent Financial Regulator.

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