Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I raised this matter yesterday. The Taoiseach needs to tell us whether the Minister for Finance will be here for this debate at the outset as he is the person in negotiation with both the eurozone and ECOFIN Ministers today. It would be very odd to have this further extension of the guarantee without the Minister of Finance being present and actively listening to the all of the debate.

I remind the Taoiseach that when Mr. Rehn came here last Tuesday, he said was accompanied by officials whom he described as working in the Department of Finance. We need to have the Minister for Finance here to tell the people honestly and truthfully what is going on. If we can begin to understand and have confidence, perhaps we might be able to project that. At the moment people are generally fearful and do not know what to believe. They certainly do not believe that everything is fine with the banks.

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