Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

First, I wish on my behalf and of my party to sympathise with the Minister on the death of his uncle.

To move on to prose after all that poetry. The Minister will appreciate an issue arises concerning the reliability of forecasts by the Department of Finance. The forecast for growth in the last budget transpired to be seriously wrong. The forecast on which all parties relied for their economic policies before the 2007 general election was seriously off-line too.

When the bank guarantee was introduced, the Minister told the Dáil that night that the total liabilities for Anglo Irish Bank would be approximately €1.5 billion. Later on, when Anglo Irish bank was nationalised in January 2009, the Minister's forecast had gone up to €4.5 billion. During 2009 it began to creep up even more with the Minister claiming between €8 billion and €10 billion would be needed. Suddenly, the figure was up to €20 billion, drifting even further to €24 billion. We are now at a range of between €29 billion to €32 billion as being the absolute liability. Who was giving the Minister this information? Was it coming from the Central Bank, the Financial Regulator, or solely from Anglo Irish Bank? Was he relying on information provided by his Department? Will he trace the instalments of the estimates he communicated to the House? Will he explain why his estimates of liability were so wildly wrong?

See this speech in context