Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Labour Party does not agree to the arrangement for the taking of No. 16. This is the proposal the Government is bringing to the House to extend the blanket guarantee that was introduced two years ago. Whatever justification there might have been two years ago — that the Government was up all night and had to bring the matter before the House in a rush and put the gun to our heads to agree to it — there is no justification whatever for the same procedure being used in 2010. This House has been closed down by the Government for the past 12 weeks. I would have expected, at a minimum, that if the Government wanted to put this motion before us the Dáil would have been reconvened earlier than today and that adequate time would have been allowed to tease it out and discuss it, thus allowing us to represent the people who elected us to this House.

Second, this proposal is, extraordinarily, being put to us the day before the Financial Regulator will publish what we are told will be the final figure in respect of Anglo Irish Bank, a figure which the Taoiseach tells us he does not yet know. The Dáil is being asked to write another blank cheque following which we will be told tomorrow what was the size of the previous blank cheque. This is the wrong way to go about dealing with what is a serious motion before the House. The scheme introduced two years ago tied the State to the banking system at the hip, the consequences of which we all know, and we are now being asked to extend it and to have this all done and dusted in a couple of hours. The Labour Party will not agree to that.

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