Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

This report, with that of Mr. Honohan, states, "Fiscal policy, bank governance and financial supervision left the economy vulnerable to a deep crisis, with costly and extended social fallout". The findings reiterate Mr. Honohan's conclusion that Government's policy, under the direction of the Taoiseach, left the "public finances highly vulnerable to a downturn".

The reports do not reveal new information. However, they refute any arguments hitherto brought forward by the Taoiseach. The Lehman Brothers defence has been thoroughly discredited by this latest report. Claims by the Taoiseach and the Government that the current crisis emerged overnight are nonsense. It was building before 2007 and since. Any pleadings by the Taoiseach that the crisis in this country is as a result of global forces have been exposed as incorrect.

The Regling and Watson report has found that the greater part of the crisis in Ireland has been homemade. The conduct of the banks was a response to economic circumstances which were profoundly influenced by political decisions. The report also highlights not just the fact that Fianna Fáil-led Governments have been fiscally reckless in shrinking the tax base, while simultaneously extending public spending, but also idiotic in their extraordinary decisions to increase tax incentive schemes. The report stresses, in vindication of Mr. Honohan's findings, the serious and dangerous faults "in macro-economic and budgetary policies which contributed significantly to the economic relying to a clearly unsustainable extent ... for Government revenue".

Deputy Cowen's position as Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil's mandate to lead the country have been compromised even further by the findings of these reports which highlight that domestic mismanagement is at the heart of our economic problems. Considering the Taoiseach was Minister for Finance at the time of this mismanagement, it leaves one with no alternative but to support the motion.