Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

-----without a State guarantee, we would have been unable to offer confidence that the Government was standing behind the system when it was in imminent peril. That was the situation then but, as the Minister will make clear at 5 p.m., we have made the response that is now necessary to ensure we have a banking system that provides the prospect of economic recovery and serves the economy. Despite all the revisions in which Deputy Gilmore wants to engage, the policy decisions he proposed at a critical time for this country were the wrong ones and would have been catastrophic for the economy in the context of the decisions we had to take.

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