Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Deputy to allow me to speak. I have only ten minutes. With the greatest of respect, please allow democracy to take its course and permit people to speak.

If Deputies read Alistair Darling's account they will see that the very same thing was happening in Britain. He received a telephone call one afternoon informing him that Royal Bank of Scotland, RBS, one of the largest banks in the world, was about to go bust. Why was that the case? It was because of a liquidity crisis across the entire banking system in the developed world. In the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, banking confidence was shattered, banks stopped lending to each other and we had an enormous crisis. That was the initial manifestation of a much deeper crisis, which became a solvency crisis subsequently. These are the issues and, as Professor Honohan said in his analysis of the bank guarantee, something substantive had to be put in place to avoid a further catastrophic hit on the Irish economy over and above the hit that resulted from the general economic collapse in Western developed economies. I agree we made contributions to the problem in terms of domestic policy, but what was interesting was the Tánaiste's claim that the Government is rescuing the situation. He basically opposed every single item of the programme he is now enthusiastically endorsing for three or four years before he entered government. The Tánaiste fought tooth and nail against every single taxation measure that was proposed in this House, as did the Taoiseach and the Fine Gael Party. They also opposed every cut and followed every lobby group wherever it wanted to lead them. The Tánaiste made commitment after commitment, as we know from the debate about Roscommon hospital and so on.

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