Ivana Bacik (Independent)

——which exceeded liabilities. Many of us had real doubts about what the Minister said. What we know, having heard about the back to back loan and fraudulent presentation of loan money being presented as a customer deposit and therefore part of the assets of the bank is that the cushion is exposed to have been a fiction.

What we do not know is how many other fictions we were legislating on the basis of and how many other fictions and back to back loans exist between individual financial institutions. We will find it very difficult to believe what the banks and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, tell us. I have a lot of respect for him personally but he should have read the report on Anglo Irish Bank. Everyone knew this was the dodgy bank. It was 120 pages; he should have read it and an alarm light should have gone on when he knew his officials had referred a particular matter to the Financial Regulator. That is incompetence.