Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

It is naive or disingenuous to consider that Goldman Sachs staff are just interested in the high visibility work and that it does not enter their minds that future clients will say Goldman Sachs saw the inside of AIB and that will encourage them to go to the company rather than another firm.

I refer to another aspect of this. Is this an admission that the Minister is giving up on the retrospective recapitalisation of the banks? He has come into the House on numerous occasions and said that once the SSM is set up, we can apply. He has still not applied through that. Government sources are reported as saying Ireland has little or no chance of ever recouping the billions of euro pumped in to rescuing the banks from Europe. Is this the wrong moment to make that admission and to accept that defeat, particularly in the context of the previous questions around the election of Syriza and the change that will make to the European picture, including the possibility of a European debt conference? Surely now is not the moment to sell to private investors and lose State control over a key bank. Instead, the Minister should seek retrospective recapitalisation.

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