Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

He was close enough to the Minister at midnight on the night he bet the entire nation's patrimony on bailing out the banks. Who was at the heart of the bail out and who was among the Minister's principal advisers? The then Governor of the Central Bank and the then regulator. No one from the Opposition was there until the Minister had made his decisions. Those were the people who came in with long faces, telling us they had been advising the Minister. They were good enough to give advice then, and what did the Minister do? He put Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide, two rotten institutions, at the heart of the bank guarantee and put that burden on the backs of ordinary workers and businesses.

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