Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail)

I did not get a chance, because of time constraints on Second Stage, to put on record that this, the third largest bank in the country, has been responsible for the employment of tens of thousands of people over the past ten or 12 years. Looking back on the ICC Bank and the ACC Bank, my question to the Minister of State is does this now mean that the assistance of small and medium sized businesses, private and family owned, will be the priority of the new bank from tomorrow morning? They are the businesses that ACC Bank and ICC Bank kept going in the 1970s and 1980s when there also were massive downturns in the economy, the difference on this occasion being that it is global. It appears everywhere is in the same difficulty, in the UK and the United States or anywhere where our young people had to emigrate to in the 1970s and 1980s. If that is the case, I wish the new bank well. We will have a friend that will be able to assist all those entrepreneurs who brought hundreds and thousands of jobs, particularly to rural areas, employing Irish people with Irish raw materials. Those achievements stand and can be expanded once we get over this global downturn.