Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Even in Argentina, which was held up as an example, it has only been in recent years - almost 20 years after their default - that they have begun to be able to sort their issues.

On the subject of Anglo Irish Bank, I was somebody in the Dáil who pursued the issues which led to the banking collapse, in particular the wild and extravagant property tax breaks which were given to developers and to many of what were called "high net worth individuals" to invest in property. That, more than anything else, sowed the seeds of the Irish collapse, as well as the fact that we had joined the euro and more money was available more cheaply to Irish banks to lend for property development. A small builder's bank, a boutique bank which I think had been run for the previous 20 or maybe 40 years in a modest way and which was very little known about except by people in the building trade and by people involved in investment, suddenly ballooned to the point at which it became bigger, certainly, than Bank of Ireland and was possibly going to become bigger than AIB. There was a famous quote at one stage from the big main street banks, which of course we absolutely need as a society to look after our money, to help us to save and to help us to invest, that Anglo Irish Bank was "eating our lunch". The other banks went after that particular model with the awful consequences that we know of for so many individuals, communities, business people and shareholders in the banks, many of whom were relatively small investors and lost all of their money, much of which was private savings for their retirement.

The scale of the human tragedy as a result of the mismanagement and the abuse that happened at Anglo Irish Bank affected, and ultimately almost brought down, this State. If we are to have an honest debate here, we must acknowledge that sorting it out, no matter what option was chosen, was never going to be easy.

Many of the Deputies who went for the default option have clearly never lived in a state either during or after a default. Otherwise they would know that is one of the worst things one could visit on any country's population. It means massive unemployment, far higher than we experienced-----

See this speech in context