Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As is typical of the Government, the Tánaiste has tried to distance himself from the crisis in Cyprus and said it is different here. I refer to an article in The Irish Times, which quotes a German banker who headed up the Deutsche Bank London operation and who was involved in the IFSC:

Instead of having to go all the way to Wall Street, German banks soon found a casino in their own euro zone backyard: Dublin. “Ireland, with its tax breaks, became a convenient place to do all of this business.” [He goes on] “If you set up a tax haven, however, you have to be clear that people will come who are not necessarily interested in business but simply the tax benefits. It was Ireland that opened a Pandora’s box.”

I put it to the Tánaiste that it is an accurate description of the IFSC as was and as is. The comparison with the casino financial system in Cyprus is very strong. The only difference between what happened in Ireland and in Cyprus is that the intervention of the Cypriot people last week forced the EU finance Ministers, including our Minister for Finance to back off on an outrageous proposal to raid the savings of ordinary people under €100,000 and forced Governments to burn the bondholders and corporate depositors and protect those with savings under €100,000. That contrasts sharply with the Tánaiste's continued determination, in the context of Ireland's crisis, to protect the bondholders and the corporate depositors and inflict all the pain on the people who have under €100,000. The Tánaiste should not tell us he would not consider raiding the bank accounts of ordinary citizens because the Tánaiste has just given himself the power to do that. The Government will raid the bank accounts and wage packets of ordinary citizens to impose the home tax.

See this speech in context