Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The reality is that the economy is flat. Even the Irish chief executives announced this morning that they cannot predict growth until late 2014. Naturally, we welcome any job announcements, especially the announcement this morning in County Louth, but overall, were those in government to look at the unemployment figures, they would see that they are rising despite the severely high level of emigration. I return to the nub of the question: can the Tánaiste - with a degree of perspective and honesty, as he put it, and in the absence of denial or anger - tell us when, not how, the moral and economic benefit of retrospective capitalisation will accrue to us, the people? As the Taoiseach eventually agreed on Monday, the people effectively saved the euro by virtue of recapitalisation at their expense.

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