David Norris (Independent)

With regard to the bank guarantee, I share my colleagues' concern. I voted against the guarantee. I also asked several pertinent questions. I asked about the exact amount of the guarantee, which was some €440 billion. Then I asked the Minister and his advisers our gross national product for the previous year. They did not know and had to go out and make a telephone call. Is that not extraordinary? When they came back, it turned out that our gross national product for that year was less than half what we were to guarantee. It was quite extraordinary and one of the principal reasons I voted against it. I am concerned that, not only in this Parliament but across Europe, politicians are playing their own narrow sectional, national and partisan games. There is no doubt the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is making a mistake when she sets her face against the development of euro bonds. This is the weapon about which I was talking last week that might help to rescue the situation and she opposes it for perfectly sound national electoral reasons. If the euro is to survive, there is an inevitability that centrifugal forces will drive it towards such centralisation. If it does not, the euro will fracture.

I believe we are entitled to know various matters about the bank guarantee. Recently I tried to put some bondholders' names on the record but the Cathaoirleach stopped me. I will now try to do so again and, subsequently, will be looking for the Cathaoirleach to explain why he stopped me. Will the Leader confirm that one of the bondholders is Goldman Sachs? This company has been described as a vampire squid on the face of the public purse and we are entitled to know if it is one of the bondholders. Money has been taken from the people referred to by Senator MacSharry who have had to switch off their electricity supply and live in squalor, fear and the cold to pay these big financial institutions which have gambled. It is wrong, unethical and unjust. We need to know to whom we are giving the money.