Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

If people wish to oppose this measure, they must put forward an alternative. It appears the only alternative is a default position where one effectively defaults on the commitments one has made. In our case, the consequence of owning the main banks, apart from Bank of Ireland which is in 50% State ownership, is that their liabilities and assets belong to the State. One may agree or disagree with how that came about but it is the de facto position. The train has left the station.

Let us consider the default option. At a eurozone meeting I attended in February, it was agreed to provide for an organised default by Greece of €170 billion. It could be argued that this default, which involved the public and private sectors, was the largest ever default. In other words, countries that held Greek debt were obliged to pony up the interest and hand it back. That was a big commitment for them and, thankfully, Ireland was not exposed enormously in that regard. However, for private sector involvement, they were also obliged to pony up a huge amount of money. While that was an example of default, has it worked? For those who suggest default offers an option and alternative, please show me where it has worked. Do they mean Argentina, where, to take up the hunger analogy used by Senator David Norris in respect of the woman he met outside Leinster House the other day, one quarter of the population went hungry? What do they mean? Will they, please, show me where the alternative has worked?

We are part of a eurozone with 16 other countries and defaulting would take us out of it. As for whether it would be immediate, Members should run the following numbers. There are 110,000 direct US multinational jobs here, with a further 120,000 indirect jobs, and they would go overnight because once one introduces capital controls to stop people from taking money out of the country, there is no longer a Single Market. As for what happened in Iceland which has its own currency, the reason it could do this was the authorities there stopped people from taking money out of the country via capital controls. Consequently, were that to happen in Ireland from 1 January 2013, it would be goodbye to all foreign direct investment. Such investors would be out of here within one day. Members should run the numbers and explain to me the impact an additional 200,000 on the dole would have.

Another point which I believe Senator John Gilroy has made concerns what is happening in Greece. It is not the poor or those in receipt of unemployment benefit who are leaving but the rich who always go first. They take their posh houses or multiple posh houses and liquidate.