Taoiseach 'misspoke' with bailout comment - Varadkar

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar. 

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has told the Dáil that there was a bailout of the banks.

Mr Varadkar was pressed on comments made by Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the Dáil yesterday, during which he claimed the banks and bank shareholders were not bailed out.

Questioned by Solidarity-PBP TD Richard Boyd-Barrett, who claimed Mr Martin had "entered a winter wonderland fairy tale" when he made the remarks, Mr Varadkar said: "There was a bailout of the banks 12 years ago."

Mr Varadkar added: "The Taoiseach misspoke yesterday. He did correct himself very quickly in fairness. What he meant to say was the bank owners, the bank shareholders were not bailed out.

"Those who owned the banks, those who chaired the banks lost all, or almost all, of their money, some were very wealthy people some were not, some were just everyday people who bought shares."

He added that the banks were nationalised.

Yesterday, Mr Martin said in the Dáil: "The banks were not bailed out. Shareholders in the banks were not bailed out" and instead "the State took equity".

"That is not a popular thing to say, but it is a fact."

Mr Martin has come under mounting pressure to correct the record of the Dáil over his controversial remarks about the bank bailout.

The Labour Party have joined Sinn Féin in calling on Micheál Martin to correct the Dáil record after he claimed Irish banks did not receive a bailout.

Labour TD Brendan Howling dubbed the comments “bizarre” adding that the Taoiseach “has to think of what he's saying. And, you know, you can't ever reinvent history.” 

He said: “I mean, by any plain understanding of English, the Irish people bailed out the banks in 2008.”

Agreeing that the record of the Dáil should be corrected, Mr Howlin said: "I mean, sometimes in the teeth of questioning you say things that you have to think again about.

“I think that episode was so painful and has been so painful over the subsequent decade for the Irish people. We have to be very truthful about it,” Mr Howlin told RTÉ’s Claire Byrne programme.

Turns out we didn't bail out the banks after all pic.twitter.com/4fWk8kA0mW

— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 16, 2020

Sinn Féin TD Maireád Farrell has said that bank bailout cost Irish taxpayers €66.8 billion due to Fianna Fáil’s disastrous management of the economy.

“The Taoiseach should correct the Dáil record.”

Mr Martin's comments came after Solidarity-PBP TD Richard Boyd Barrett raised the ongoing Debenhams dispute and claimed the Government could not put money on the table because it would set a precedent but is willing to bail out the banks.

Earlier today, Minister of State for Skills and Further Education Niall Collins defended the Taoiseach's comments and accused Mr Boyd Barrett of putting forward a "stupid narrative" and said he is living in a "fantasy land".

He said that "it's fine" for Mr Boyd Barrett to put forward certain narratives about the banks because "he doesn't have to worry about the economy".

Mr Collins said: "Micheál Martin was clearly responding to an insinuation by Richard Boyd Barrett that the owners or the shareholders of the banks were bailed out, and that didn't happen, that wasn't the case, as we know, shareholders took a huge hit when the banks faced almost collapse, and indeed some of them collapsed.

"The banks were capitalized by the State, the State took equity in the banks," he told Newstalk Breakfast.