Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak. I compliment in particular the Minister for Finance, a fellow Limerick man, on his negotiating skills, which have brought us to this stage. I know members of the Opposition are trying to find something wrong with this, as they have to, given that that is their job. However, up to now, what they have found is what they would have read in the back of The Beano or The Dandy. To be honest, this proves it is opposition for opposition's sake - the same old story.

Looking at this in the immediate aftermath last week, a member of the ECB governing council who sat down to watch the Oireachtas debating the deal which the ECB had noted might have been surprised. After the Taoiseach and Tánaiste had sat down, the next speaker was the leader of the party that had foisted this on top of us, looking for something to hang his hat on. Then, a group of people drew a name out of a hat to find someone to find fault with this. It would not have inspired much confidence in people looking in from the outside, although they would have said that at least we had a stable Government negotiating on our behalf and that, as most commentators have said, we got the best deal possible.

With regard to the Opposition, I make the following point in all sincerity. If the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party thought it was important enough to give a mealy-mouthed apology to the people of this country at his Ard-Fheis, he should use his Private Members' time once every three weeks - he has had the opportunity for the last two years to do this - to come into this House and give a full and unequivocal apology to the people of this country for wrecking our economy. If he did that, he would be showing some semblance of humility and empathy with people who have been saddled with absolutely penal debt thanks to the actions of the Fianna Fáil Administration, which we now have to unravel. He would also be showing some degree of leadership whereas, to be honest, leadership has been totally lacking on the Opposition benches.

We might contrast this with the manner in which the Taoiseach, in particular, and the Tánaiste have undertaken their work in the last two years by quietly going around Europe and building up a network of the friends, which Ireland was sorely lacking, again thanks to the members of the previous Administration's attitude to, for example, the Council of Ministers, to which they might or might not turn up, sometimes sending a civil servant instead. Our reputation was at rock bottom. In the scale of things, given that it took 14 years to wreck our reputation, to take two years to rebuild it is commendable. We have managed to bring the ECB and the 17 governors from the individual member states, as well as the broader 27 member states, to a consensus that what had happened in Ireland was wrong and what the previous Administration had led us into was wrong. To unravel all of that was, I believe, a good deal for Ireland.

There are no capital payments until 2038 and 1% interest until then. If anyone borrowed money from their local credit union or bank on that basis, they would come out of it saying it was not a bad deal. People have said that what we did last week converted the debt into sovereign debt. It did not. It was sovereign debt from the day the promissory note was issued, given that the previous Government was clearly saying "We promise to pay". What could that be other than sovereign debt on behalf of the people of the State? Much of the comment that has been thrown around is, I note, from both the extreme right and extreme left of the Technical Group in particular. The two have moved so far apart that, some day, they will actually meet each other coming back. It is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

The worst part of what the members of the Opposition have done in showing their hand is that not only did they not expect the Minister for Finance to get the deal he got, they actually hoped he would not get it. In my or anyone else's language, that is not just disloyalty to the country; to hope the Government fails is bordering on selling the country in a very treacherous kind of way. The Minister has made it perfectly clear - this comes from the agreement the Taoiseach managed to secure in June last year with the European Heads of State and Government - that this separation of sovereign debt from banking debt needs to be progressed into the future.

Staff members of IBRC have been in contact with me and, I am sure, with other Deputies. It is very important that we, as a House, do not lump the middle and lower echelons of IBRC and the former Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank into the category containing those who landed those institutions in trouble. I implore the liquidator - and the Minister, if he has any influence, although I realise this is at arm's length - to ensure the ordinary decent staff of that bank are accommodated and looked after. It was not their fault the Irish State was saddled with the debts of Anglo Irish Bank.

On a further important point, the people of this State want to know that the investigations into what happened leading up to the collapse of Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank will continue and that the resources of the State are put 100% behind it. This is part of a three-pronged approach - the resolution of the promissory note, the separation of banking and sovereign debt and, more importantly, the public response to ensure that those people - be they in politics, banking or regulation - who brought this country to near financial ruin get their day in court, and that the people of this country see justice served. Then, and only then, will we have a conclusion to this sorry mess once and for all.

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