Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When the Government scrambled back from Brussels and went on our national airwaves to tell people about the game changer and the seismic shift, I appeared on the same radio station a little later. I said that the Government was holding the ball in its hands and was facing an open goal and that all it needed to do was put the ball in the back of the net but it has screwed that up royally. While we always knew that there was a need for unanimity and that the shares would be transferred, what was not known and is still not known is the value that would be attributed to the shares by the ESM. As we exited the recession and the economy picked up, it was always going to be more difficult to achieve that. For a long time, an application for an ESM recapitalisation of all of the banks - nothing in the Minister's statement claims that it must just be for the pillar banks - could have been made.

The House has major debates about selling shares in our airlines that are valued at a fraction of the assets that we hold in AIB and yet a Minister is deciding without any scrutiny that an option that is available to the State as we speak - it may not be achievable, but it is available - is off the table. The assets are worth in the region of €40 billion. This is not an acceptable way to do politics. The matter should be referred to a committee so that all of the options might be discussed-----

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