Pre-Christmas Dáil debate vital, says opposition

THE €10 billion bailout of the country’s biggest banks must be debated in the Dáil before it breaks for a five-week Christmas recess on Thursday, the opposition said last night.

The Labour party said the last three days of Dáil business must be used to vote on legislation needed to use part of the €18.7bn National Pension Reserve Fund for the recapitalisation.

Labour’s Finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said it is “unthinkable” that politicians would go on holidays until January 27 with the recapitalisation plans “up in the air”.

She said: “We need a full discussion of what upside there will be for the taxpayer from such a massive injection of public funds. We need to know if the Government intends to take an equity stake in the banks.”

Ms Burton said there have been few changes in banking structures since Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, announced plans of a guarantee scheme two and a half months ago.

“In the period since the guarantee was granted there have been no changes at the top levels of management and executive director level in the banks, even though these were the same senior people responsible for the decisions which have contributed to the current difficulties,” she said.

Fine Gael said the bailout proposals still lack detail.

Finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, said the guarantee scheme has not helped small businesses.

“Two and a half months on we’ve had 35,000 job losses, credit has dried up, and what we have from government is a proposal to buy time. We still don’t have a strategy to deal with the problem that credit is not available.”

Socialist party Euro candidate, Joe Higgins, called for a full nationalisation of the banks.

“We know nothing about how this recapitalisation will be supervised, or how the taxpayers and pension funds will be protected. Is public money going to be committed to writing off the billions in bad loans entered into for speculative gain?” he asked.

“The banks should be nationalised forthwith. They should be democratically managed and run in the interests of the majority in society under workers control and with bank workers, small savers, the self-employed and small enterprises represented.”