Alex White (Labour)

——and by Deputy Cowen when he was Minister for Finance. They have us where we are. That is the reason for the present situation. There is no confidence.

Everyone knows the vote will go through in the same way as it did in the Dáil. I accept and respect that, constitutionally, the Government has a mandate from the people based on the previous election. However, it does not have a mandate for anything it is doing currently. The mandate the Government got in 2007 was an entirely different mandate in its character to what it is now implementing. The only way it can be demonstrated clearly whether there is confidence in any member of the Government is to put it to the test. The Government will not even hold by-elections. It will not face the people in any shape or form.

I heard what Senator Ross had to say about the Green Party. I like and respect a lot of people in the Green Party but the party will never be able to get away from the fact that it is propping up an absolutely disastrous Government which does not have the confidence of the people. The Government does not have credibility. The Taoiseach does not have credibility for what he is doing and he does not have the confidence of the people of this country as demonstrated not just in one opinion poll but over and over again in recent months and years.

Senator Cassidy referred to the Government being derided. The banking reports deride the policy of the Government. They are an unanswerable indictment of Government policy in recent years. I wish to focus on the guarantee. The notion exists that no other decision could have been made and that the guarantee was inevitable. Senator Cassidy suggested the Labour Party said there was no need for a guarantee. That is not in fact what we said. We opposed the guarantee ultimately because the very reasonable amendments tabled had not been accepted by the Government. We said there was a very respectable argument, supported by many economists across the board, for taking the banks into temporary public ownership. It was not just respectable at the time, it is also touched upon by Professor Honohan in the last page of his report. He refers to the emergency lending assistance approach that could have been taken. I remember the Minister for Finance saying in the House that our international reputation would be destroyed if we adopted that approach. Professor Honohan states:

It is unlikely that even extensive use of the facility [emergency lending assistance] to buy time to facilitate nationalisation the following weekend would have been viewed negatively [or as damaging] by partner central banks under the circumstances.

My party will vote in favour of the motion that the Seanad has no confidence in the Taoiseach and the Government.