Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At the heart of this debacle are people, many of them in small businesses, who have weathered a very dark and horrible political and economic storm in the past fe years. We have seen people struggle to keep businesses going, some with more success than others. It is cold comfort that we now know what happened should not have happened and that the framework should be in place, which I accept. The reality is that there are people who have been very badly treated. There is evidence to suggest the Central Bank knew about the difficulties in Setanta last November. A situation rolled into this year up and continued last month, as a result of which the company has gone into liquidation and people have been left stranded. That is not good enough. It is not good enough when one considers the history of the Central Bank around the time of the collapse of the economy. It is absolutely infuriating for people to be left in this situation, despite the existence of those whose job it is to keep an eye on companies such as Setanta and to be in consultation with the authorities in Malta and other EU member states and aware of directives and all the talk about frameworks. In effect, they have been left high and dry. I implore the Minister of State to convey to the Minister for Finance the message that we need to step up to the plate and ensure those who have been left disenfranchised and out of pocket will have their costs redeemed insofar as it is possible to do so because they are entitled to nothing less, particularly if an organ of State was asleep at the wheel. God knows, that institution has good form in that regard.

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