Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

We have a perfectly serviceable and costly Department of Finance, which has facilities for press conferences.

Will the Minister tell us at this point what is the amount of the loan, the assistance and the facilities he and the Government propose to seek? We have need for money under three headings. First, we need at least another €20 billion for the banks, and some would say perhaps €40 billion - the Minister would know more about that. Second, we need money to cover the fiscal deficit. As the ordinary Irish deficit - the difference between what we, as a country, spend and what we take in taxes - is reckoned to be somewhere between €18 billion and €20 billion, it is estimated that over the three years of the plan we will need €45 billion. However, I have seen others estimate that it may be as much as €60 billion given the interest costs on our ever-growing debt, and the rate at which those interest costs are charged is increasing the deficit gap all the time.

Third, a whole series of national Government debt which was sold ten years ago, five years ago and two years ago falls due in the normal course of events for rolling over the first three years of the loan. I understand the amounts falling due for either payment or rollover in the next three years are significant. Again, the Minister might advise us in this regard. A lot of short-term debt was issued by the State in the past two and a half years because of the blanket bank guarantee. I understand approximately €11 billion of that is falling due in the next three to four years, which clearly means the amount of the facility has to be large.

The next point is the rate of interest. Is the Government really negotiating or is this a technical exercise being carried out by officials in the Department of Finance, where there are observers present from the Central Bank and the NTMA, and where clearly the politicians of the Government are entirely distracted by the internal collapse of the Government and are not in a position to negotiate in any serious way? That alone is a reason for an election.

Finally, what is the term of the loan? I understand most of these facilities are three-year money, which means, for example, if they are priced at 5.5%, although that sounds cheaper than ten-year money at 8% or 9%, it is in fact extremely expensive for three-year money. In other words, the Irish people will be climbing a mountain, and as they climb the top of the mountain they will be going ever higher so we will not be able to get out of this for a very long period.

This brings me to a number of issues that have been mentioned by Ministers and others in the context of the current crisis. I am sick of hearing about the stress testing of banks. It is a phrase I do not want to hear much of when this Dáil is through. We have our old friend, the stress test - what one of the distinguished journalists used to call "Joo Diligence", which is another way of stress testing. It does not matter any longer in the context of the current crisis what stress tests are done because our banks have burned our economy so much the international markets do not believe in them. Somebody may buy them very cheaply. Hedge funds, which are bottom feeders, may be picking up shares in Bank of Ireland and AIB today - who is to say? However, they are bottom feeders and will be in and out as quickly as possible for their buck. Yet, we seriously propose to have more stress tests. If the capital ratio of Irish banks was raised to 12% or 14%, nobody on the markets would care. Why? It is because the contagion of the Irish banks has spread to the Irish sovereign through the disaster of the strategy of the blanket bank guarantee.

The Minister suggested two and a quarter years ago, at the time of the guarantee, that the Irish banks were going to fail. I remember at the time the Governor of the Central Bank and the regulator trotted in and out of committees in the basement of Leinster House to repeat, rather like a prayer to St. Jude, that the fundamentals were sound.

The Minister tells us now, two and a quarter years later, the Irish banks were in meltdown. However, at the time he said anything but that. It is an interesting acknowledgment on his part-----

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