Dáil debates
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Banking Sector Crisis: Motions
12:00 pm
Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
The problem is we are taking on the contingent liability that goes with these derivatives. They are interest-rate swaps – the very products that did for Lehman Brothers and many other financial institutions.
Economic governance is so poor in this country that this revised business plan does not even set out the likely level of the liability that may arise. When the State guarantee was introduced, the Government said over and over again the banks did not have fancy financial instruments. In the last days before the empire went down, did someone in Anglo Irish Bank buy and sell interest-rate swaps? How much of these €14 billion derivatives and their contingent liability stem from Anglo Irish Bank?
For ten days before they were published, the Minister for Finance and the Government had the Regling, Watson and Honohan reports in their hands, during which they could analyse them and prepare their rebuttal. Will the Minister for Finance give a commitment that when Mr. Peter Nyberg, the Finnish Wallander, completes his report it will come directly to the House and not be offered to Fianna Fáil to do a scissors-and-paste job to suck anything out of it that defends its position? Holding the first banking reports for ten days was an abuse.
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