Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Acting Chairman, Deputy Durkan, being a wise man, and the Minister for Finance will know that the promissory note agreement represents a complete U-turn by the Government. We were told by the Tánaiste and Taoiseach recently, when they had moved quietly to the Sinn Féin position, that the Government wanted to separate bad bank debt from sovereign debt. Instead, it has replaced bad bank debt, represented by the promissory note, with sovereign bonds. There is now €28 billion in promissory notes to cover the losses of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide. We have been handcuffed to the arrangement for the next 40 years. This is from a Government that told us during the election campaign that Anglo Irish Bank would not get another red cent.

If we needed any reminder about precisely whose debt we are paying, the RTE report into Irish Nationwide earlier this week served as a timely one. The programme exposed the extent to which the banking practices of that institution were out of control. The corrupt practices involving senior management, developers, speculators and others, in addition to inadequate regulation and incompetent and dishonest decisions by the Fianna Fáil Government, saddled the taxpayer with a huge debt of €5.4 billion, plus interest. This is as much as the Government's family household tax will raise over the next ten years, or almost six times what the Government is stripping from the health budget for this year. Last week the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government compounded the mistakes of Fianna Fáil by turning this bad banking debt, which is not the people's, into sovereign debt. Generations of citizens will have to pay for the corrupt actions of the golden circles and the bad decisions of the former and current Governments.

Almost five years after the Irish Nationwide-Anglo Irish Bank debacle, citizens have still not seen any of the reports carried out into the banking collapse. None of them has been published and no public inquiry has been held. No one in the banks has been held accountable. We still do not know the truth about these bad banks, or the sordid deal Fianna Fáil struck with Michael Fingleton to allow him to keep his €1 million pay-off.

Ernst & Young was the auditor for Anglo Irish Bank and signed off on accounts that showed a profit for the bank in years when the bank was technically insolvent. Where is the transparency in that regard? The auditor has never been held to account for this.

It is worth comparing the attitude of this Government and the Fianna Fáil Government in their treatment of the big bankers with their attitude to ordinary mortgage holders. When big bankers run up debts of billions of euro, the Government steps in to pick up the tab using public money. However, when it comes to the families who are struggling under the weight of mortgage arrears, negative equity and increasing interest rates, not to mention the new family home tax, the Government does nothing. Where is the write-down, bailout or dig-out for the 180,000 families in mortgage arrears?

Almost one in four mortgage holders is in distress. This is shocking, yet the Government does nothing. Mortgage holders, ordinary people, low- and middle-income families, the poor and disadvantaged, the disabled and the young are paying for the bank bailouts. This is the critical failing in the Government's approach to this issue. It never approached this issue on the basis that it was not the people's debt. From the outset, despite the pre-election statements from the Minister's Cabinet colleagues that no money should be paid into the bad banks, he was determined to pay those billions. He went into negotiations and did not even ask for a write-down. He went in telling the ECB that we would pay the debt that was not ours. The ECB wanted to turn Ireland's bank debt into sovereign debt. It wanted the promissory note, an IOU signed by the Minister's predecessor, turned into sovereign bonds. He gave it everything it wanted. Every single cent will be paid to the ECB by this and future generations.

The Minister for Finance had the gall recently to try to defend all this behaviour by comparing it to Sinn Féin's negotiating strategy prior to the Good Friday Agreement. Given Fine Gael's appalling record on the North and its dismal history of bad negotiations with the British, if this was not so serious it would be very greannmhar. The Minister claimed Sinn Féin did not go into the negotiations seeking a united Ireland. He did not go into his negotiations looking for a write-down. It is true that the Irish Government at the time of the Good Friday Agreement negotiations did not seek Irish unity, but Sinn Féin did. We negotiated the end of the Government of Ireland Act and secured a peaceful and democratic way to end British Government involvement in our country and to achieve Irish unity. The current Government negotiated a bank deal that turned bank debt into sovereign debt. It negotiated a bank deal that will see every cent paid. Our grandchildren will owe billions, so Fine Gael should not lecture Sinn Féin about negotiating strategies; it should consider its own.

Most people's assessment of the legislation will be based on what it means for them. They will ask how it improves their lives. The State's overall debt has not been reduced by this deal and the Government has not abandoned its austerity approach. It intends to proceed with this and its plans to tax the family home. It intends to proceed with at least another two austerity budgets, which approach is having devastating social consequences. The latest statistics from the CSO, released yesterday, indicate that over 700,000 people are in poverty across the State. This is the direct result of the Government's austerity policies. More than 232,000 children are at risk of poverty, representing an increase on the figures of a year ago.

Just as the Government oversold the deal last June, it is overselling this one. Rather than lifting the debt burden from the people, it has tied it to them. The Government should have insisted on a separation of banking and sovereign debt. Instead Fine Gael, to its eternal shame, and the Labour Party have signed up to repaying every cent of the debt associated with the Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide catastrophe.

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