Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I join Deputy Kenny and the Taoiseach in extending my sympathy and that of the Labour Party to the families of the people who suffered the tragedies in Ballycotton and Newcastle West and to the local communities in those areas.

The Taoiseach heard from me on 30 September 2008, when I told him that giving the blanket guarantee to the banks was handing over the deeds of the country to the banks. Now we know the truth of it. The deeds are being called in. It is time for the Taoiseach to stop the pretence. All weekend we heard nothing but pretence from the Government and its Ministers. It was pretence that nothing was happening. The Minister for Justice and Law Reform said it was fiction. Another Minister said nothing was happening, while another said that if anything was happening, he did not know about it. However, it was quite clear that the Government was already engaged in discussions with European institutions in respect of some type of bailout, assistance or whatever term the Taoiseach chooses to apply to it now.

We are getting more of the pretence today. We are being told it is not the State that is involved but the banks, even though the banks and the State are virtually one and the same thing as a result of the guarantee. We are told it is not Ireland that is the issue but the eurozone and that everybody is trying to save it. All of that is pretence. We know the officers of the European Commission and the ECB are here and that the officials from the IMF are on their way. They are not coming to do their Christmas shopping, but to have discussions with the Government, as the Taoiseach acknowledged in his reply.

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