Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein)

This is a U-turn. Members may recognise this from Fine Gael and Labour Party U-turns on issues such as increases in the college fees, hospital closures and cuts to child benefit or social welfare. Today we have another U-turn, one on which election promises were made and votes were hard won. This is the U-turn that brought phrases such as "not one more red cent would go into the banks", "Labour doesn't do blank cheques" and that the Government would "break the vicious cycle of the massive dependence of the banks on the State". Today we are being asked to saddle the Irish State and the Irish taxpayer with an unknown liability on top of the existing guarantee of €100 billion. We are being asked to write a blank cheque for the banks, including Anglo Irish Bank. Given the volatility in the eurozone, it is likely that the scale of this liability will increase. The Government is asking us to do this as uncertainty and volatility in the banking system increases and, with it, the level of risk to the taxpayer. The Government is asking us to support a decision that Fine Gael and the Labour Party rejected numerous times in 2009 and 2010. They want us to give a vote of confidence to Fianna Fáil's banking strategy, to which they were vehemently opposed. So much for the programme for Government's commitment to end the previous Government's "blank cheques for banks policy".