Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

We have to get him out of the cupboard. That is the way life goes. The economic and banking policy of the Government over recent years has been a combination of wishful thinking and hoping tomorrow will be different. It was not too long after the last general election that we realised dark clouds were forming on the economic front domestically and internationally. It reached its crescendo in 2008 but it still took the Government time to respond to the seriousness of the issue.

In the course of the debate on the bank guarantee scheme in September 2008 in this House, when I tabled an amendment to the Bill to the effect that we should not spend more than €10 billion on bailing out the banks, the Minister, Deputy Lenihan, stood where the Minister of State is sitting now, looked across at us and very earnestly informed us that neither he nor the Government had any intention of spending more than €10 billion on bailing out the banks. Four months later, he had no problem spending €4.5 billion on bailing out Anglo Irish Bank and by the time we have got to the second anniversary of that statement, the amount involved has risen to €50 billion.

There is a sense in the House that somehow €50 billion is the final figure and that we can all talk about closure in terms of the cost of the banking crisis. That is not the case. There is still a need to clear through all the loans of the banks and there may still be a few landmines which have yet to go off - poor quality loans which are still in the institutions. A change was made recently, from €5 million €12 million, to the limit of loans with which NAMA will be involved. That can only indicate that NAMA is being snowed under with some of the work that is coming its way and that there may still be a lot we need to know about the banking system in this country.

If that has the effect of increasing the bailout cost, it is something about which we need to know. We need the Minister, Deputy Lenihan, to put aside the sort of High Court theatrics in which he often engages in both Houses of giving apparently earnest and informed opinions which incorporate a certain amount of showmanship. When they are exposed as being wrong, he points out that he did not know the right answer, in which case he may be deemed incompetent. Either that or he is participating in a form of cover-up.

The Minister of State saw what happened to the interest rates on Irish Government bonds in this country throughout last year. It may be that this sort of thinking is spooking international investors. That is something we must deal with. We must start talking about being more open, and not just with international investors because they do not understand our priority in dealing with the crisis here, which is the citizens of the country. We are not giving them the clear answers they want. There is a need for the Government to put some of its old ways behind it and start engaging, not just with the Opposition, but with the people who will end up paying for the crisis over the next two generations. That is not happening. Even though we participated in consensus talks and are quite happy to go to the Department of Finance and keep confidential whatever information it wishes to keep confidential, we still have not heard much from Ministers about what will happen over the next month. Major issues will have to be dealt with over the next month. We are still holding to the old-fashioned way of waiting for the budget night when all will be revealed, like opening night at the opera. That is no longer appropriate. There is a need for the Government and all of us as public representatives to engage with the people on what will be needed in future. The banking crisis has shown us how something can go badly wrong and that is why there is a need to engage with the people. What the people will have to suffer and pay for over the next couple of years is quite serious.

In the context of the big figures we will discuss in a few weeks' time, paying back the promissory notes to which the Minister of State referred will cost us in excess of €1.5 billion per year. That is more than we spend on all accident and emergency departments. That is the very real impact of the crisis and what we are paying for. When the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, starts talking about how she will cut a billion here and a billion there, the people who will be affected are those paying for the Anglo Irish Bank bailout. That is the harsh reality of the situation and there is no other way of looking at it.

They are the things which are annoying. The public is angry that no one seems to be paying for this.