Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. There are none so blind as those who refuse to read an official report in its entirety and want only to extract this or that paragraph they can twist and twist for their own purposes. It is most unfortunate that Ministers are unwilling to recognize the any flaws in the September 2008 guarantee. These flaws are honestly recognized by Professor Honohan. They are extremely serious and may prove to be very costly as early as this autumn when the banks have to roll over as much as a further €74 billion in debt.

We again heard some phoniness today, namely, that we are deeming the sub-debt at an attractive price and then rolling it over at a higher interest rate. To be honest one produces a book profit but the ongoing costs, as I am sure the departmental representatives know, are consequently much higher. I said that the Taoiseach cannot fully come to terms with what he did. When he was Minister for Finance he refused to recognise that the issue of the millionaires paying no tax was something which was rooted in the property-based tax breaks. It took him years to do anything about it. He referred yesterday to reigning in property-based tax breaks from 2005.

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