Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to astonish Fianna Fáil Ministers. When I hear the Minister for Finance talking about a haircut, it reminds me of a story. In a business, work had stopped because a particular gentleman was of great importance to the business and if he was not there, no work was done. The boss arrived and wondered where the man was. It turned out he had gone for a haircut. The boss was furious and when the man returned an hour later the boss challenged him and asked where he had gone. The reply was that he had gone for a haircut. The boss asked why he had gone for a haircut on the company's time and the smart response was that the hair had grown on the company's time. The boss replied that it had not all grown on the company's time and the man replied that he did not get it all cut. In my analogy, the business is the State, the boss is the Executive or the Government and the smart guy is the banks. The banks have run rings around the State and the Government. On a number of occasions they came to the Houses and told everyone it was fine and the fundamentals were sound. Does the Minister of State remember that? The Minister of State was not quite so astonished when it turned out the fundamentals were not sound.

AIB was the biggest company in the State, making billions in profits not so long ago. Now, it is effectively insolvent. In September 2008, Deputy Noonan asked if this was a recapitalisation issue. The Minister for Finance replied that it was not recapitalisation but purely a liquidity crisis and nothing else. I refer to the €3 billion that will be lent by Bank of Ireland and AIB to small and medium-sized enterprises. Mr. Richie Boucher stated bluntly that Bank of Ireland made €3 billion available to small and medium-sized enterprises in 2009. I do not know the figures for AIB but if a big play is being made of the fact that AIB and Bank of Ireland will make available €3 billion each there is nothing extra from Bank of Ireland because it made the same amount available in the previous calendar year. Anyone contacting the local branch manager of Bank of Ireland may as well be telephoning his secretary because the manager must contact the underwriters in Dublin to agree every matter.

An item on the news last night, where Charlie Bird was in Cape Cod, was distasteful. It is distasteful for the public to have to swallow the bitter pill of €80 billion between NAMA and recapitalisation but there is nothing more annoying or distasteful to citizens of this country than seeing the people who caused this crisis living in multi-million euro mansions. The Garda Síochána and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement are using untested legislation and we do not know how well it will work until we come out the other end of this process. We know that it is slow. In other jurisdictions, these people would have been found guilty or innocent of wrongdoing. Within a matter of weeks or months, the case of Mr. Bernie Madoff was concluded.

The previous regulator was incompetent, as was his office. However, I do not blame it all on him because this is a single party State in which Fianna Fáil has been in Government for 21 of the past 23 years. How can the regulator, who was appointed by the Government, go against what the Government is saying? Every Minister and all the colleagues of the Minister of State, Deputy Kelleher, said that it was sound and that we should keep it going. The previous Taoiseach said to keep things going and that it was sound. How can anyone challenge us and how good and great we were? The Taoiseach, who was Minister for Finance at the time, said it was sound but it was not. The foundations were built on quicksand and the quicksand will swallow every penny of the nation's wealth for the next ten, 15 or 20 years. Children not yet born will be paying these taxes. That is nearly as distasteful as watching the likes of Mr. Drumm in a multi-million euro house in Cape Cod.

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