Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The only reason I decided to be a candidate in a general election was to try to bring some of the facts and correct analysis of what had happened in the Irish economy, and, therefore, to the people, onto the discussion floor in the House. This was preferable to what I had seen to that point, that is to say, Irish representatives from the previous Government and from the current Government being pushed around and not understanding what had happened.

The book that Timothy Geithner has published recently, Stress Test, should give the Minister a better understanding of what happens in a financial crisis. The labyrinthine corridors of discussion and politics and so on go out the window and people have to deal with the pragmatics of what is going on. Our country has a GDP of approximately €175 billion - the Minister referred to this recently when he introduced the budget - and a GNP of €140 billion or whatever, but a public debt overhang, regardless of household debt, of well over €200 billion. This type of albatross simply should not be there because a great proportion of it represents losses, not previously-incurred debt for productive purposes. These are losses as a result of the credit Ponzi scheme undertaken by the boards of the banking sector in this country, whether Irish-owned or foreign-owned. They went on a massive spree. These boards used funds and blew up their balance sheets. The value of the domestic banking system increased from a level at three times national income to well over five times national income over seven years. It was crazy stuff.

Seán and Mary and their families have been told that they must bear the cost of the credit that was spent and hosed at the economy. They must pay all of it back although the assets that were bought with that credit have collapsed. The people who provided the funds to the banks were bond subscribers. They sold their bonds into the secondary market and became bondholders. They got paid in full by the European system and the ECB, which had €145 billion in the Irish-owned banks alone in 2008. They all got paid. The inferno of fear that pervaded the financial markets was the reason Ireland had to become the firebreak. The people now carry the scar. In the case of Anglo Irish Bank, the figure was €35 billion approximately and it is now down to €25 billion. It is held by our Central Bank Governor in the form of promissory bonds.

That represents the losses and the escape, unscathed, of people who had bought these bonds in the secondary market, when they knew that many of them were worthless. That is the reason 1.5 million citizens of this country have had their lives ripped apart. A total of 300,000 quality people have emigrated. Households are more than two years in arrears on debt because there has been a pathetic refusal to honourably write down their loans to the correct recoverable amounts in the lifetime of the borrowers. How dare the banks insist on a policy of no write-offs, when they are the ones that created the credit Ponzi pyramid? How dare they create a system that has left 90,000 households which amount to 250,000 to 300,000 people homeless or on waiting lists? That is the reality.

People in America were pragmatic when they recognised that the system had gone out of control. Recall the troubled asset relief programme, TARP, that Hank Poulson, Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke put together. They had to write new practical rules for the situation. We should be writing new rules. We should ask Patrick Honohan for the key to his desk and remove the figure of €25 billion. We should explain that they are losses which should never have been imposed on the people. That would not be a deal but the correction of a great wrong. We are fussing about interest rates and so forth when the core is toxic and wrong. It is not right and no amount of shuffling of lever arch files to officials in Frankfurt or Brussels will make a wrong right.

Where are the courage and the leadership? Is the Government squandering the biggest majority in the history of the State? That is the reason the by-elections returned straight talking, true and honest guys who will fight for the people. That is the reason Diarmuid O'Flynn in Ballyhea has secured a turnout every Sunday for the past three years.

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