Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The point I was making before the debate adjourned was that constituents have raised the idea with me that the debt has now been passed to our children and is a noose around their neck for the future. There is a very good reason this country was borrowing €3.1 billion to pay the promissory note debt in recent years. Due to the bank guarantee in 2008, this is our debt. As unfair and as wrong as that is, it was a situation we could not get away from. The implications of not seeing down the payment of that debt were far worse for the citizens of this State. The biggest flaw of the bank guarantee of 2008 was not on the night, when it was Hobson's choice. It was the fact the writing was on the wall for some time beforehand that there were problems in Anglo and other banking institutions, yet the members of the previous Government kept their heads in the sand and left themselves in a position where, when the bankers came that night, the options were slim and none. The former Taoiseach was out playing golf with the head of Anglo Irish Bank six or eight months in advance yet he never thought to ask how things were going in the bank that everyone was talking about as being in trouble. That is why we ended up with a bank guarantee.

The option of breaking away from the obligations of this bank guarantee by defaulting, which is glibly thrown out in this House by Members of the Opposition, is not an option that citizens of this State could even countenance. We know how difficult the last budget was with a €3.5 billion correction. To have to find over €10 billion overnight, which is what a default would lead to, is something that, in the measure of spending cuts and taxes, the people of this State could not handle.

On another point, NAMA will be a lot cheaper to operate than the bank had been. We had this galling situation of bankers' pay and pensions that we have had to honour due to previous agreements which are very difficult to break away from. NAMA will be a much cheaper proposition to run. There are no big golden handshakes or gold-plated pensions for IBRC staff who are going, in particular the higher paid staff. This is recognition of the handling of this issue. While I undoubtedly have sympathy for the staff who are losing their jobs, we are not seeing massive pay-offs at the top, which has been the case in the past.

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