Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is a terrible price which is even more galling when one considers that these banks which we have nursed back to health refuse to give relief to distressed mortgage-holders. They refuse to lend to small and medium enterprises and they refuse to put the mountains of cash we have given them back into the economy to create jobs. I draw the attention of the Minister of State, Deputy Hayes, to the sharp contrast between the behaviour of the banks we bailed out to this extent and the offer of the credit unions to use their assets to finance job creation programmes, social schemes and so on. They are pleading with the Government to use their assets to help the economy but the banks, which have been stuffed with our cash and which we own, refuse to do so. That is the contrast between the two.

We will not support the extension of this guarantee. Over the next three or so years, we will be paying off the bondholders at a rate of €17.4 billion in 2013, €6 billion in 2014 and €11 billion in 2015. If we were to assert control over these banks, which we own, and if we were to default on these bondholders, that money could be used for the stimulus programme needed to create jobs, economic growth, the protection of the vulnerable and the development of the economic and industrial infrastructure of the country. Why not do this instead of continuing with this insane protection of the financiers and banking system that caused the crisis? The Government is allowing them to walk off into the sunset after we have bailed them out and paid this terrible price. They will walk off into the sunset, be again privatised and return to making profits, while we are left holding the can.

See this speech in context