David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When he came into the House, the Minister questioned whether any Senator could give an example of a company that announced it would liquidate over a medium timeframe. Can the Minister give me an example of Bills that have been rammed through the Oireachtas at 4.30 a.m. without proper scrutiny and without amendment? Can he give me an example of that? No he cannot because it is not how we do business. A number of Senators on Government benches talked about promissory notes. Senator Michael D'Arcy referred to the promissory notes as money we knew we had to pay. A Labour Senator said that a debt writedown would not be living in the real world. What about the summit last June when the Minister, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, came back and proclaimed to the people of Ireland that they had a game changer, that we had the separation of banking debt from sovereign debt?