Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this particularly important issue. I was just thinking about 29 and 30 September 2008, when some of us were sitting on the other side of the House and the proposal was brought in by the then Government to the effect that a bank guarantee was to be undertaken on behalf of the Irish people. Some of us had very serious concerns about it. When people say Fine Gael voted in favour, it is true that we did, although we did not all agree with it. It is also true that the Government of the day had a working majority and did not need the Opposition to help it out, so claims that the Government was in any way assisted by the Opposition on that day are untrue.

I cannot understand why the Government of the day was looking for the Opposition to support it, given it had a full working majority itself and, in everything it had done in every budget before that for the previous 15 years, it never appealed to the Opposition once to support it or help. We know why that is the case and you know too, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, although confidentiality forbids you from disclosing that kind of thing.

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