Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I thank the Chair for giving me an opportunity to speak in this debate. When the report was published, there was a great deal of disappointment that it did not name individuals and that no silver bullet of clear blame was apportioned, given that blame was so widely spread. In defence of Mr. Nyberg, the legislation under which the commission operated provided that, if there was any question of prejudice, the Minister of the day would need to apply to the courts for permission to publish. If there is anything people want, it is for the guilty to pay, not to be paid. That the public was appalled by events yesterday was understandable. People would never have forgiven us had future court cases been prejudiced.

The previous Government has taken some comfort from the fact that blame was spread widely, but it should not. It was in charge, which is what being in government means. The responsibility for governance and good regulation is a political one, particularly in the case of bank excesses. We are not referring to a single incident but to sustained overspending and credit provision in a particular sector. This continued for many years, while dissenting voices - irrespective of what people say, there were dissenting voices, not least from the then Opposition benches - were subdued in favour of the imperative to accrue the revenue being yielded by the property bubble.

Various actors were undoubtedly complicit in the banking disaster, but I do not want this fact to exonerate the former Government or implicate the entire population of Ireland. To refer to herd mentalities, "group think" and a national speculative mania is to suggest we were all involved in the frenzy, but that is not the case. We are not all guilty. For example, young people who paid well over the odds for houses at the time are not guilty. They were participants, but they were also victims. They had no choice but to do what every generation had done, namely, go out and try to provide for their families. They have a burden around their necks, whereas those who caused the crisis have long since sailed off into the sunset to play golf or whatever.

Two myths that have been dispelled are that we were all somehow part of a problem started by Lehman Brothers and that ours was just one of the countries affected, including Greece and Portugal. There was a worldwide banking crisis, but other countries dealt with theirs. Britain bailed out its banks and got over the crisis. Its banks are profitable and contributing to its Exchequer again. Greece, Portugal and, more than likely, Spain have significant problems, but they are fiscal deficit issues. They do not have a banking problem. Unfortunately, Ireland has the largest banking problem in the developed world and we have a fiscal problem to boot.

The report states that, on the night the fateful guarantee was given in September 2008, information was deficient and, had information been presented, other decisions might have been taken. For example, Anglo Irish Bank might have been taken into national administration and gradually wound down. Unfortunately, this did not occur. I question the extent to which there was a lack of information. I accept that the Government might not have had all of the information available, but I cannot believe the banks did not have it. It is not credible that those whose job it was to know what was going on and who were involved daily in banking business believed Irish property was the most valuable on the planet or that every bank lending large amounts of money into a single sector was sustainable. The banks knew it was not just a liquidity problem but a major solvency problem. That summer money was pouring out of the banks. The deposits pouring out were not just domestic, they were from international investors who were reducing their deposits in Irish banks. The professionals must have known this, as the dogs in the street knew it that summer. Those who should have been advising the Government and were well paid to do so stayed quiet, perhaps in order to hide their own failure to alert the Government at an earlier stage. Perhaps they hoped for the best and thought it was just a liquidity problem. We will live with the consequences of these decisions and the piecemeal choices which followed that always seemed to be insufficient.

It is important for us to learn from the mistakes of the time. I, therefore, welcome the announcements made by the Minister that there will be a change of regime and that there will be regulation in the future. A completely new regime will be in place from now on.

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