Tom Shehan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Senator Barrett on his initiative. I always admire the way he goes about doing these things. Unlike other economists who use gobbledygook language, Senator Barrett presents matters in simple language which is easy to understand. We have to be careful, however. SMEs are currently suffering greatly. I have spoken to people in that sector and, to be honest, many SMEs are not worthy of credit. I recently met some people whose biggest problem was collecting money for their business, but that was their fault because they did not collect. They have now engaged the help of a debt collector, because they could not do it themselves. Their structure was wrong in that respect.

Will we ever really know what happened on that night in September 2008? From what we do know of it, I do not believe it could happen again. At that time, there was such an intrinsic link between the Government, its policies and the banks. The CSO's figures for 2006 showed 260,000 unoccupied houses in the country, yet the Government's policy was to build 90,000 units per annum.