Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

I am incredibly underwhelmed by this report. We could have gone across the road to Trinity College and paid somebody considerably less to produce a report which tells us what everybody knows. It mentions flawed lending overseen by silent observers and enabled by public authorities. We know all this. By blaming everybody, in essence the report states that nobody is responsible. I absolutely reject that viewpoint and, in particular, the implication that the victims of this crisis, those people who were forced into buying property at the top end of the market, who paid considerably over the odds for structures that are, in many cases, unsafe, who are saddled with 40 year mortgages, somehow contributed to the crisis. I do not agree with that. The reality is the roots of the banking problem were not in misjudged risks but arose from pure naked greed, profiteering and speculation on the property market. It is a system called capitalism.

It began at local authority level where members of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, in the main, facilitated the wholesale rezoning jamboree that made people overnight millionaires, a process that ultimately carried over into house prices. People did warn about what would happen. People such as my colleague, Deputy Joe Higgins, were told by the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to go away and commit suicide because they were talking down the party. People knew what was going on. The problems were deliberately facilitated by a strategy of personal enrichment carried on by some of the wealthiest people in Irish society, such as Sean Quinn whose role was well highlighted today in an article by Vincent Browne in The Irish Times. What went on in regard to Sean Quinn's shares was an unbelievable defrauding of, ultimately, the taxpayer. He was facilitated by Anglo Irish Bank executives, Morgan Stanley, the regulator and the Central Bank. Everybody knew about it yet nothing was done. There is no recommendation in the report for legislative changes concerning fraud, reckless endangerment or any other such issue.

The report is silent on the fact that it was German, French and British banks which lent to get in on the act, thereby fuelling the property bubble under the eye of the ECB which also continued to contribute to the situation. Now we are supposed to believe these are the people who will save us. The reality is those at the top of society, aided and abetted by their masters - or servants - in Dáil Éireann whom they had paid, gambled on the economy and we are paying the price for it. The irony is that we will sit here in the future to discuss another report on the current debacle and will make the same point, namely, that nobody knew. Everybody knew; then and now.

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