Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is ample time for people to cast their votes.

Senators Bacik, Conway, Norris and others spoke about the bailout situation in Cyprus. Last June European leaders agreed to break the vicious circle between banking and sovereign debts. With this aim in mind we also agreed that the European Stability Mechanism could be used to recapitalise banks directly. This remains the stated policy and position of the European Heads of State and Government. This is why Ireland is seeking further EU assistance to reduce taxpayers' exposure to our banking system as we hope to get back to the markets soon. We have been back already. We will continue this work with our European partners to ensure Ireland is in a position to avail of new recapitalisation tools that are being developed. A key priority for the Government has been to ease the bank-debt burden on Irish taxpayers and to clean up our banks in order to support the economic recovery. As I recently stated, the policy on socialising the cost of private bank failure by bailing out bank bondholders was in the first instance the responsibility of the previous Fianna Fáil Government, but the error was compounded-----