Alex White (Labour)

Obviously, I touched a raw nerve with the Senator who does not usually pipe up in that way.

Trust is the next issue to be considered with regard to the future and confidence. I had a very interesting experience earlier, although people might think it strange for me to relate it. I listened to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Lenihan, on "Morning Ireland" this morning and said afterwards to a person that I thought he had done a good interview. That person said, "Yes, but do you believe him? I cannot believe him any more." I asked what was meant by this. The reply was not necessarily a personal criticism of the Minister but one of the Government and its attitude. It has to do with trust. There was such a lengthy period during which the people were not told the full truth or given all the facts that now they are being given facts and the truth which we hope is the whole truth, they have lost faith in anything they are told. There should have been far more honesty much earlier in the process. We should not have had Members coming into the Dáil or the Seanad suggesting, for example, the bank guarantee would be cheap and that we would get out of the banking crisis relatively easily. I recall that at one stage a Minister came into this Chamber and more or less suggested to Members that we would make money out of the whole process, that NAMA essentially would be a money spinner. People simply did not believe it.

Senators MacSharry, Hanafin and others jumped up to make speeches to sustain the notion that not only would everything be fine but that we would come so well out of it that we would make a profit. The business people rightly mentioned by Senator Dearey who are looking for an opportunity to invest, employ people and develop into the future are hard-nosed. They did not believe this and it has turned out that they were right not to. Ordinary citizens who were sceptical about what they were being told now find that it was actually wrong and that the current position is that they cannot believe what the Government tells them. It is like crying "Wolf!" The Government has come along at this late stage and started to level with the people, but they have given up believing it. It is paralysed and trapped in a situation where, no matter what it states, it will not be able to re-establish the trust of the people. That is the difficulty. That is why I said yesterday on the Order of Business that even if none of the things the Government is being accused of in relation to policy failures, the failure as regards bank policy and elsewhere, was true——