Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

NAMA has used the office of the Financial Regulator to outline those distressed assets and the level of loss involved in them. All of these actions by the Government have been in an effort to show that we are doing all we can within our power to deal with the situation that has arisen. We are making sure we work with our partners in the European Union in dealing with the issue that now affects the entire euro area. It is not specific to Ireland. Of course, Ireland has its own issues, which it has been talking about with the European Union institutions on an ongoing basis since the crisis first began. What we need to do is to allow those discussions to take place at the meeting of euro area finance Ministers, and presumably a statement will emerge. We will then be in a position to come back to the House after the ECOFIN meeting to discuss this further. I do not think it does the country any good to engage in controversy here while people are representing our essential national interest abroad. We are all trying to make sure Ireland sees its way to recovery from this difficult period.

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