Paul Hosford: When is a bailout not a bailout?

It is wrong to insult the intelligence of the country by suggesting that a history we are still living did not happen

Taoiseach Micheál Martin tried to split a hair so fine that it could only be seen with a microscope.

When is a bailout not a bailout? 

That is the question being asked this week after the Taoiseach's comment and backtrack on whether Ireland's bank bailout was indeed a bailout. 

In trying to make the distinction between a bailout of the institution and a bailout of investors, Micheál Martin tried to split a hair so fine that it could only be seen with a microscope.

But this pursuit of technical correctness came at the cost of context and consequences surrounding the 2008 bank guarantee.

We do not live in a vacuum. We do not interact in a vacuum. We do not bail out banks in a vacuum.

In attempting to split this particular hair  — on whether banks were bailed out or an equity stake was taken by the State — Micheál Martin was asking a nation still paying for the mistakes of a government of which he was a senior member to accept that semantics mattered.

"Shareholders in the banks were not bailed out," he said, rightly.

But overall, he was factually and contextually wrong. 

Without wishing to sound like a bad best man speech, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a bailout as "an act of giving financial assistance to a failing business or economy to save it from collapse". 

There is no clearer example of this in Irish history than pumping billions into banks to save them. AIB is still on high streets because the Irish state bailed it out.

In rowing back, to The Echo newspaper, something which the Government press office had declined to do in the hours after Mr Martin's statement, the Taoiseach tried to make his point a little clearer, but he should now correct the record of the Dáil to retract words he said, "in the heat of battle".

It is understandable that the Taoiseach bristles when asked about the bailout. But nobody in Fianna Fáil is expected to pay penance when entering the gates of Leinster House. 

Nobody shuns them in the canteen or asks that they wear the hairshirt around the building. 

It is, largely, a party which has moved on from the bailout, one which now holds the Taoiseach's office, the public expenditure pursestrings and important ministries. 

Nobody is asking the party to flagellate itself at the altar of public opinion.

But do not insult the intelligence of the country by suggesting that a history we are still living did not happen. 

Do not tell those whose family members are still in Toronto and London and Sydney this Christmas that what we call the catalyst for their flight matters.

Do not tell us that a bailout is not a bailout.