Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have this opportunity, on behalf of Fianna Fáil, to speak to the motion put down by the Members from the Technical Group. I noted the comments of the Minister of State and Deputy McNamara about the origin of the promissory note. I am not in the business of lecturing anybody but I will address the issue at the outset. It is all too easy to point to the bank guarantee of September 2008 as being the cause of all evil with bank debt. As we all know, it was a two-year guarantee and Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised in January 2009, with the action taken with no knowledge of the scale of losses being carried by the bank at the time. The promissory note was put in place in 2010 when the scale of losses emerged, and it was done at a time when in Europe and Ireland there was no bank resolution regime in place to deal with dead banks or defunct financial institutions. There should have been and there is no question that the losses carried by Anglo Irish Bank were far too big for the State to handle.

We must recognise that even since the current Government came to power, there was over €16 billion of unguaranteed, unsecured bondholders left in the system and they will receive every single cent of the money. That will happen because the European Central Bank will not allow this Government, as it did not allow the previous Government, to impose any losses on senior bondholders.

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