Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

This month, everyone who is fortunate to still have a job will open his or her pay packet to find a large hole in it. The same is true for people in receipt of social welfare payments. People who run businesses and put up signs about 50% off this and 60% off that are still having difficulty getting people through their doors. All of this is occurring because of the decision the Government asked the Dáil to make, namely, to provide a blanket bailout, guarantee or whatever one calls it that included Anglo Irish Bank.

As the Taoiseach stated in his reply to Deputy Kenny, the Labour Party opposed the guarantee at the time. We clearly differ on the matter and I do not want to go back over the arguments, although we can if the Taoiseach wants. The reason there is interest in what he discussed with Mr. FitzPatrick while playing golf, during the dinner and so on is simple. When the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance asked the House on 30 September 2008 to agree to the blanket bailout, did the former know Anglo Irish Bank was a bust bank? We want to pursue him on the question of his contacts with the board members and senior officers of Anglo Irish Bank because every time we asked him about his state of knowledge of the bank's position, how large a hole it was in and whether it was insolvent, he did not tell us about any of his contacts with Mr. FitzPatrick or the bank's senior officers. He never told us that Mr. FitzPatrick telephoned him in Malaysia, as the Taoiseach has now acknowledged. The House discussed the dinner which the Taoiseach attended at the invitation of the bank's board, as I understand it, but we heard nothing about the game of golf.

Let us take it from the top. The Taoiseach has now told us about the telephone conversation. A number of weeks after that conversation, he was invited to dinner with the board. To date, he has given the impression that the bank was not discussed at the dinner. He sat between Mr. Drumm and Mr. FitzPatrick. They claim Mr. Drumm made a presentation to the Taoiseach and asked that the NTMA provide deposits. Until now, the Taoiseach has given the impression that he just sat between the two men. I do not know what they talked about. Maybe it was the plot line of "Eastenders". The impression the Taoiseach has given is that, whatever it was they discussed, they did not discuss banking business.

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