Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At about this time last year, we were all asked to come to the Chamber for an important announcement. We were told that the State had cobbled together an agreement that meant that we would not pay the promissory note last year. We were asked to applaud the Government and to take it at face value that a great deal had been achieved on behalf of the Irish taxpayer.

However, as the mist faded and the cobwebs were dusted away and after delving into what occurred at the time, what became clear was that the State repaid the emergency liquidity assistance, ELA, to Anglo Irish Bank or the IBRC. The Central Bank got its money and the European Central Bank, ECB, was satisfied that a certain amount of ELA had been taken out of the system. The difference was that it was done through a convoluted approach. In simple terms, the Minister asked Bank of Ireland for a loan of €3.1 billion, paid Anglo Irish Bank that money and Anglo Irish Bank then paid it to the Central Bank, which disappeared the money.

At this late hour, we are again being asked to take at face value the Government's claim that a deal is in the interests of the State and are being told that not having the time to deal with and read through the legislation does not matter. The briefing that finance spokespersons and other Deputies received was not concluded because we were called back to the Chamber. Certain questions could not be answered at the meeting. We were asked not to ask certain other questions. It is a matter of taking the Government at face value.

Through all of the leaks and spin of recent weeks, particularly in the last number of days and hours, something has become clear - this Government intends to pay every single last cent of the Anglo Irish Bank promissory note, totalling somewhere in the region of €28 billion.

This year is part one of a plan and a couple of other parts are to follow later if the Minister gets the call from Frankfurt to say that it is happy with the proposal. The spin that will be put on what the Minister has laid before the House is that we are winding up the toxic bank that was Anglo Irish Bank. Nobody in this Chamber would be happier than me and my party colleagues to see Anglo Irish Bank disappear. The Minister is winding up the bank but he is not winding up the debt. That is where he critically fails in his endeavours in terms of the legislation.

This so-called debate is an affront to democracy and to people the length and breadth of the State who have suffered austerity under the Government and the previous Government of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. It is not appropriate that we would be asked to deal with such important legislation that deals with a bank that has assets and liabilities in excess of €40 billion; that gives the Minister wide-ranging powers to direct the liquidators to liquidate the bank in a certain way and that gives him powers to direct NAMA to purchase the assets of IBRC.

In his speech the Minister outlined that the ministerial guarantee to which he referred is not the same as the promissory note. I ask him to elaborate on the point. I understand the ministerial guarantee refers to the comfort letters, if one could call them that – the comfort e-mails - that were sent to the Central Bank at the time the exceptional liquidity assistance, ELA, was issued. The Minister has said that if the assets which NAMA will be directed to purchase from IBRC do not realise the values then he will also convert the comfort letters into reality. In other words, the Minister will pay out the shortfall. Not only are we on the hook for the promissory note, but those dodgy e-mails that were issued between the Central Bank and the late Minister for Finance will now take full force if the State does not realise its assets and a liability arises.

The situation of the workers has been raised previously. I have been one of the loudest in challenging the fact that IBRC continues to employ staff such as the chief risk officer at a salary of €500,000. I hope nobody in the House, at least on this side, would shed tears to see certain people being able to take less money in IBRC. Approximately 850 employees in the State work for IBRC and approximately 150 others work in various jurisdictions. The vast majority of them are not on anywhere near the salaries of the chief risk officer, yet 850 Irish employees were informed today through Bloomberg in 2013 - when we celebrate the centenary of the great Lock-out - that their jobs were gone. How could we stand over that?

I do not know how many times we have asked for information on what is happening with the Anglo Irish Bank promissory note. We were told that it was kept confidential because that is the way negotiations have to be kept. The Minister did not even inform his Cabinet colleagues as to what was going on with the deal. It was kept so tight that I am not sure the Economic Management Council - the four wise men - were even aware of the details, but lo and behold, it all blew up in the Minister’s face. A leak from the European Central Bank appeared on Bloomberg and at 12 midnight we were rushed into the House to pass legislation supposedly to protect the interests of the State. The Minister has done such a great job of keeping it so tight that we have been forced to introduce emergency legislation at midnight.

Openness and transparency would dictate that we should all be more informed; not only Deputies who have a mandate to be present and to represent the public, but people at home, whom the Minister is asking to carry the burden of the promissory note. The information the Minister imparted to us in his opening remarks is absolutely disgraceful. He has given no idea why the Bill is required at this point, why we need to introduce such legislation in the early hours of the morning, why he wants to ensure that none of us can properly parse the legislation before we are asked to sign it into law or why there is no opportunity for us to table amendments to the legislation.

We need to learn the lessons of the past. This is the type of politics that Fianna Fáil practised for far too long. It is the type of politics that led us to constructing the Fianna Fáil promissory note. It was the late night meetings, and the approach was to forget about the legislation, take me at face value, I am doing this to protect the interests of the State and if we do not pull on the green jersey we are the bad boys here-----

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