Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

Go raibh maith agat agus gabhaim buíochas le Senator Bacik. We are being asked to support the nationalisation of what is, in effect, a failed business and a failed banking policy by a failed Government. The Taoiseach warned this afternoon against the making of rash comments, but if we were not to voice the concerns of the majority of the Irish people, the economic experts and the media, we would not be doing our job in opposition.

The escapades of Seán FitzPatrick and others have, once and for all, exposed the systematic fraud in Irish banking. It shows that senior bank managers cannot be trusted and their auditors are blind, that officials in the Central Bank, the central regulator and the Department of Finance are completely incompetent and that the Government's banking regulation policy in the past ten years has been an abysmal failure.

How the likes of FitzPatrick can get away with fraudulently misappropriating more than €80 million beggars belief. Needless to say, there are countless FitzPatricks in other banking institutions. Anglo Irish Bank is Ireland's Enron, but as in the United States, there will be no criminal investigation and nobody will be brought to justice. If FitzPatrick did not break the law in secretly embezzling tens of millions of euro, why are there not laws to make such behaviour illegal?

Why were the banking institutions exempt from the Companies Act 1990 and why do world class bankers get away with almost destroying our world class economy without ever being noticed by our world class auditors, Ernst & Young, the Financial Regulator or the Central Bank? The hypocrisy of our justice system is demonstrated by the fact that people can be sent to prison for shoplifting but that Seán FitzPatrick will get off scot free and simply retire to his home in Greystones to work on his golf handicap. With this Bill we are being asked to take ownership of Anglo Irish Bank without being told the actual volume of bad debts.