Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Today during Leaders’ Questions, Deputy Catherine Murphy rightly said that was what should be done. When I, with her, Deputy Stephen S. Donnelly, Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, MEP and Nessa Childers, MEP, told the Governor of the Central Bank in July that the guarantee was like an insurance guarantee and, therefore, voidable and what had had happened as a result was wrong, he actually became irritated. People only get irritated when one is getting near the truth. It is wrong that 40 people are sleeping rough on Grafton Street and that 90,000 household mortgages are in arrears.

There are 15 directors in Bank of Ireland, half of whom are not even Irish, while the other half have not lived or worked in Ireland for a long time. There is only one woman on the board and she is English. They are making policy decisions that mean that there will be no principal write-downs in the sustainable resolution of its mortgage books. These directors are disconnected and do not know what is going on. It is wrong.

If the Government is afraid to travel over to Frankfurt and Brussels to insist on making the case, there are others, like me, who will. I have already gone once.

See this speech in context