Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the support for the legislation from Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Equally, I acknowledge and respect the Sinn Féin party adoption of a different position.

Deputy O'Donnell rightly recognises this facility will succeed best if it were never used, a view heartfelt across the eurozone. As the Minister for Finance outlined, this is essentially a contingency or preventive measure. Across a broad range of areas including financial stability, banking supervision and regulation, economic governance and budgetary surveillance, measures will be taken to ensure, as far as possible, that difficulties such as those experienced in the past two years will not recur. In an earlier debate I quoted a statement by the EU Council President, Mr. Van Rompuy, on the whole crisis. I refer to his words from memory, without necessarily fully endorsing them. Effectively, he stated that the EU and the eurozone had been asleep for seven or eight years and had not seen this problem coming and, therefore, this was the reason for the actions being taken.

It is absolutely in Ireland's interest to play a full part in this as members of the eurozone. I will come back on this matter towards the end of the debate. There are voices, more outside the House than inside, which question the wisdom of this approach and this must be addressed.

I have no wish to do him an injustice but Deputy O'Donnell appeared to be counting the level of guarantees we must provide as money spent.

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