Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank Senators for their many and considered contributions. I will attempt to respond to as many of the points raised by Senators as possible. Last January, the Minister for Finance announced the Government's decision to set up the two reviews and a statutory commission of inquiry to complete an expert, authoritative and structured examination of the financial crisis and its impact in Ireland, to understand where the crisis in the banking system originated and to assess whether lessons could be learned to inform our future management of the sector, its institutions and their management and the management of risk and stability within the regulatory and Government systems.

It is important to understand that the reports we have received in recent days have attributed the reasons to a wide diversity of causes. It is not simply the case that government, whether domestic or international, was the key contributor to the financial, banking and economic collapse that occurred and the very deep and sharp recession we are now experiencing in Ireland, as are many other countries throughout the globe. It is not simply the case that the Governments in Ireland, the United States, France, Germany or wherever one cares to mention, are the cause of the collapse. There are many different explanations for the collapse, which is what makes it unique, distinct and different from all previous reverses in economic history.

We are experiencing something that has not been experienced to the same intensity since the formidable depression of the 1920s. It has had many different causes but essentially one can see features common to many other banking crises whether in Sweden or the Far East in the 1990s and so on.

There are only a handful of counties in the globe to which one could point which managed to avoid some of the difficulties we and the majority of countries in the global trading system experienced with regard to banking. It is noteworthy that Canada managed to avoid the difficulties mainly because it had an earlier banking crisis which it managed to learn the lessons from and it put in place robust systems of regulation and control in terms of credit and lending activity generally. It is interesting to proceed on a journey whereby we can make our financial systems safer. There is a populist outcry of the Opposition from time to time which holds that it is all the Government's fault.