Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)

Deputy O'Donnell has not come forward with any solutions.

Some have suggested that depositors and senior bond holders should have been allowed to swing for their money. That suggestion was put forward by some people in the past year. The question they have to answer, however, is whether they would support the default of depositors, as Deputy McGrath has identified, and senior bond holders? The Deputy went through the list of the people involved. Many of them are large employers who have accounts containing pay packets of workers. Others are charitable institutions. We know that the credit unions and local authorities are considerable depositors, and there are some holders of bonds.

It must be recognised also that senior bonds are investment instruments, in many cases of large employers in this country. The suggestion has been made by some that we can somehow welsh on that. If the Deputies opposite are prepared to turn their backs on those depositors and bond holders, how do they propose to manage the economy into the future?

Deputy O'Donnell has talked about that in the past, and his party's NewERA document proposes the panacea for all our employment issues but much of that is funded through the issuance of bonds. It would be a new era. They would be breaking new ground in that regard. Their suggestion that they should welsh on the bond holders——

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