Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)

There is little more to say. This country is in a bad place. I have been dealing with four banks since September 2007 and it has not been easy. One common characteristic over that three and a half years was that they told lies. At one stage, the director of one of our banks announced he would prefer to die than accept recapitalisation. Every time they were given money, we were told they would start lending. Over the past three years, we have changed from being able to borrow millions of euro to finding it impossible to borrow €10,000. The banks have been closed.

We are rescuing useless, dead banks that have told lies and have been of no benefit to the people of this State. The speculators who invested in them have invested in companies which run their operations in a bad fashion. If anyone invests in a business that is run in a bad fashion, he or she should end up paying the price. If the money men of Europe were dull enough to give so much money to the Irish banks, they should pay the price for it. If the ECB wants us to keep these useless banks afloat so that it can sort out the problems in Europe, it has to foot the bill. We can foot the bill for the money we borrow to run this State, and there will be plenty of that anyway, but we should not foot the bill to satisfy the ECB, the banks of Europe and the money men in the markets. We have had enough of neoliberalism and its doctrine of letting the markets call the shots and hands off for the State. This is crazy. If my business goes down, I do not want anyone to bail me out, and the banks should not be bailed out either. Many Irish companies are going out of business and it is not because they ran their businesses badly, but because they are victims of a banking crisis. The banks will stay in business even though they have been a disaster from an organisational point of view.

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