Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

When we came in here on that night, the Minister stood across from us and said the bank guarantee was not going to cost us anything. When I tabled an amendment to that legislation to the effect that we should not spend more than €10 billion on bailing out the banks, the Minister stated neither he nor his Government envisaged spending anything like that sort of money. No one from that side of the House, including Senator Boyle and his colleagues in Government, gave us any indication at that time that the Minister, Deputy Gormley, was privy to other information that could have been shared with the House to help us make a more informed decision. We were always given the impression that the Minister, Deputy Gormley, was woken in the middle of the night, not that he sleepwalked his way into this.