Alex White (Labour)

If the Government wishes to take some crumbs of comfort from the IMF report regarding the perceived praise of the measures the Government is taking to address the economic crisis, it cannot in logic avoid dealing with the devastating critique of its actions and inactions during the period from 2002 to 2007 in particular. Senator Boyle's party can avoid that in logic and in fairness to it because it was not in government at the time. There are one or two members of the current Government who, as the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, took great care to point out, were not members of the Government during that period. However, 15 people were in that room between 2002 and 2007, including some of the people, such as the Minister for Defence, Deputy O'Dea, and others, who are now attempting to avoid the devastating criticism of the actions of that Government during that period.

We talk about clearing away boards of banks and of institutions that have done wrong. How could any individual politician who was a member of that Government and sat in that room when the door closed for Cabinet meetings between 2002 and 2007 ever honestly hold up his or her head again and suggest to the people that he or she could continue to be a member of the Government of this country, given what has been said and seen in recent months in respect of its stewardship and failure to guide the economy properly and prudently during that period. None of those people who took us to where we are deserves to be a member of the Government in the future.

I agree with Senator Twomey on the need for a debate. Senator Hanafin and others have made a cry for a debate on what all the parties would do. He wants the Opposition to make proposals to deal with a shortfall of €20 billion whereas the Government is talking about dealing - not today or tomorrow, but sometime later in the autumn - with a shortfall of €4 billion. We have the extraordinary situation where the Labour Party and Fine Gael are being asked to make proposals to deal with a shortfall of €20 billion when the Government is talking about €4 billion and is not even making its own proposals until some time in the autumn. Let us have some reality about the nature and level of the debate that people want and expect from Opposition parties and the level of application, knowledge and information that people on the Government side expect from Opposition parties when the Government, itself, does not even have the proposals it deems necessary to deal with the €4 billion shortfall to which it points.

It would be useful to have a debate on the IMF report because at least people would then need to read that report. They would need to avoid the spin and deal with the facts. This is not spin; this is a fact. A clear disagreement is manifest in the IMF report regarding the Government's position on possible nationalisation of the banks. The Government needs to face up to that. I quote from the IMF report in considering what nationalisation might achieve.

Having taken control of the bank, the shareholders would be fully diluted in the interest of protecting the taxpayer and thus preserving the political legitimacy of the initiative. The bad assets would still be carved out, but the thorny issue of purchase price would be less important, and the period of price discovery longer, since the transactions are between two government-owned entities. The management of the full range of bad assets would proceed under the NAMA structure.

This is precisely what we in the Labour Party have been saying about nationalisation. The report continues to state:

The authorities [meaning the Government] prefer that banks stay partly in private ownership to provide continued market pricing of their underlying assets. They disagreed [in other words the Government disagreed] with the staff's view that pricing of bad assets would be any easier under nationalization.

Given that the word "disagreed" is used, how could it not be a disagreement? That is a clear disagreement and cannot be spun in the way it is being spun to suggest there is not a disagreement.