Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On 6 April, the Minister stated in the House in response to me that while he did not believe that pursuing the matter was in our best interests "at this time", ultimately, "it will be an assessment as to which route - ESM or the markets - represents the best value which will determine these decisions." The Minister went to Brussels, spoke to the media and said that this was off the agenda for AIB and Bank of Ireland. He has just repeated that. While he stated "I have said before", he left out the crucial words "at this time". He is now saying that it is no longer on the agenda. Many of us suspected that it was never on the agenda or had not been on the Minister's agenda for a long time. He was trying to take the Irish people with him knowing full well that he was not going to make an application.

This is too serious an issue to be left at that. We are discussing a large amount of money that we pumped into AIB and Bank of Ireland. The Minister went to extreme lengths to get Angela Merkel out to tell the Irish people how special we were. He talked about the game changer that was getting the words "retrospective recapitalisation" written into the articles.

What reports, evaluations and types of consideration have gone into making the decision that we will no longer apply for retrospective recapitalisation? The Minister claims that achieving it or getting it at above what the market could offer might be difficult but what work has he done to find out what his counterparts on the ESM board would consider offering were we to apply for retrospective recapitalisation? This is a significant amount of money for the State and the matter should be considered thoroughly. What considerations, reports and evaluations have been made and what work has the Minister done with his counterparts to arrive at his assessment?

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