Michael Ahern (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

Where would we be today if we had done that?

We must also remember that although the Government provided the guarantee to the banks, it was not free. As the Minister of State said, €1.3 million has been received from the banking institutions in this regard. It is important to get that message across.

In August and September of this year, €10 billion in deposits left Bank of Ireland, and I do not know how much left the other institutions. If there was no guarantee or if there was not likely to be one, I believe there would be a run on our banks, but this guarantee scheme will help to forestall that and maybe there will be no need for the guarantee in due course.

As Deputy O'Donnell said, I believe the ECB should act as a proper central bank and take full control of the Irish and other banking systems throughout Europe. We should take that step at this stage so that the ECB could operate in the same way as the Federal Reserve in the US and the Bank of England in the UK, and decouple our economy from the banking scene. Our economy, as is evident, is doing very well in this time of recession, with exports 10% to 12% ahead of the exports in the equivalent period last year and foreign direct investment holding very strong. So the fundamentals in this economy are very strong and I believe they should be decoupled from the banking system. I hope progress will be made in that regard.

I listened to the contribution of Deputy Brian Hayes earlier when he said that Anglo Irish Bank was the bank that built Fianna Fáil. I think the Deputy must be suffering from some form of amnesia.

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