Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is a serious matter and I am keen to proceed without interruption, please. A formal Cabinet decision was taken to burn bondholders by €6 billion. Subsequently, the European Central Bank got wind of this and Mr. Trichet, the then Governor, was in touch with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan. A tense situation unfolded and the Economic Management Council was convened and told about the resistance of the ECB to this measure.

To the great surprise of the rest of the Cabinet, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, was ten minutes late in making his presentation to the House. When he arrived in the House he announced the recapitalisation proposals minus the burning of the bondholders, to the astonishment of several Ministers. The book states that no one noticed that a drama of huge proportions had just taken place. No one in this House was informed that such had occurred in the hours and days beforehand. The book states that the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, although in Brussels, was especially angry when he learned the news. Only the members of the Cabinet knew that a different course of action had been decided upon a few days earlier. The book further states that some wondered about the legality of Noonan's announcement given what the Cabinet itself had agreed and so on. We have a situation made up of an extraordinary decision-making process involving the Economic Management Council whereby the Cabinet had taken a formal decision that there would be recapitalisation plus burden sharing, which I understand was of the order of €6 billion. The intervention of the European Central Bank stopped the Government in its tracks but there was no subsequent Cabinet meeting to deal with the ECB's resistance. Many Ministers were stunned with what had happened.

I put it to the Taoiseach that there is an urgent need to publish the minutes and work of the council. Why did the Government not open up on that day in terms of what had happened? Why was everyone else kept in the dark, including Ministers, in terms of the announcement that the Minister for Finance made that day to Dáil Éireann? He was ten minutes late. His speech was hurriedly put together because of all the engagement and threats from Mr. Trichet, who said that if the Government did it, the bomb would go off but it would not go off in Frankfurt. It would go off in Dublin, he warned. I call on the Taoiseach to confirm that this occurred. Why was that withheld from the public for so long? Why did we have to wait for the publication of this book to get some insight into the manner in which the Economic Management Council works, particularly vis-à-vis the rest of the Cabinet?

See this speech in context