I call Deputy Gilmore.

The people of this country are in a state of shock this morning and somewhat bewildered by the huge size of the figures and scale of the amount of money that will have to be paid for the bail-out of Anglo Irish Bank. I saw a figure this morning of €200,000 million a year in the budget. This is the sum of all the cutbacks that have taken place in health, education and social welfare. We are being told it could cost up to €40,000 million to keep Anglo Irish Bank going and the Taoiseach says it could cost even more to wind it up. The reason we are between such a rock and a hard place now over Anglo Irish Bank is because the Taoiseach provided a State guarantee for it.

On 28 September 2008, the day before the State guarantee was brought in and which included Anglo Irish Bank, that bank was a private bank. The Taoiseach could have told anyone who had invested in that bank or purchased bonds in it or loaned it money they had made an unwise business decision and that they would have to take the consequences or at the very least, if there was to be State intervention at that stage, that the State would have been in a position to negotiate with those bondholders. Instead, the Taoiseach told them not to worry about it because the State would look after it and the taxpayer would pay. He wrote a blank cheque for them. Yesterday, the details of that blank cheque were filled in.

I can understand the case for a State guarantee for high street banks and building societies but I have never been able to understand what is the case for the State guarantee and the nature and extent of that guarantee provided to Anglo Irish Bank which, after all, was a piggy bank for property speculators. The Taoiseach has stated he made that decision on the best possible advice. Earlier this year, he refused a motion from the Labour Party for an investigation or an inquiry into how that decision was made to provide such a guarantee to Anglo Irish Bank and for which we had to pay up yesterday.

Will the Taoiseach release all of the papers and all the advices available to him in September 2008 when he and his Government decided to provide a State guarantee for Anglo Irish Bank? Will he tell the House who lobbied on behalf of Anglo Irish Bank in advance of that decision being made? Will he tell the House why a decision was made, as I asked at the time, to include dated subordinated debt in that extensive guarantee?

In regard to yesterday's decisions and how they were portrayed, the capital that is being provided by the Government to the banks involves, first, the conversion of preference shareholdings in AIB and Bank of Ireland.

I am asking about Anglo Irish Bank.

I am aware of that. I will answer all the questions.

Please answer my question.

I want to answer.

My question was specific to that bank.

No, if I may say so, Deputy Gilmore's introduction suggested it is a question of paying out €2 billion per year with nothing to be gained from it. In respect of the capital we have provided, we set out a promissory note arrangement over ten years. In return for this, we have the shareholdings in the bank and the assets that have been bought by NAMA.

Wonderful businesses.

The suggestion has been made that the assets bought by NAMA are worthless. These valuations were done under due diligence and set out by NAMA yesterday.

Valuable properties.

It paid €8.5 billion for €15 billion in loans and it expects to recover the value of those loans over its seven to ten year lifetime. That is the purpose of the NAMA operation. Elements of this morning's debate seem to suggest that we are handing over money to the banks and getting nothing in return. We are getting assets to the value of the bonds we are giving to the banks over that period.

If the Deputy asked anyone, including present and past governors, they would say Anglo Irish Bank was of systemic importance. I am not simply saying that; it is acknowledged. The Deputy does not acknowledge it and argues instead that it should have been let go to the wall. He has just heard that if we had not guaranteed Anglo Irish Bank on that occasion and it went to the wall with a disorderly failure in the system, the result would have been a contagion throughout the entire system because of the interconnectedness of our banks. It was not a case of letting something go to the wall without consequence. We were not in a position to take any risk in regard to the financial system. The financial guarantee provided us with the means by which we could avoid an implosion in the banking system in Ireland. The Deputy might not want to accept that but it is a fact. That night's decisions were made on the basis of advice from and discussion with the relevant people, including the Governor of the Central Bank, Department of Finance officials and regulators.

Exactly.

The second point raised by the Deputy concerned representations. I did not receive any representation from Anglo Irish Bank on what was to be done that night.

What about the previous night?

On any night.

Did they talk in the Galway tent?

Deputy Kehoe, please.

I reject the continuing effort to suggest otherwise. The Minister for Finance and I dealt with this on the basis of advice from public officials. We made the decisions on that and no other basis.

In regard to the question of what else was involved, we made the decisions that night and the discussions continued until the early hours of the morning. It was not a question of me getting papers. It was a case of examining the situation and asking what was the challenge to the system on that occasion, what needed to done and whether the Government was prepared to act. We had to take those decisions and I believe they were the right ones because the advice of the people to whom I referred was that the financial system was at risk. I was not prepared to take that chance and no responsible person in our position in government at the time would do otherwise. The suggestion to the contrary is simply not true.

Frightening.

The Taoiseach asserts that the decision had to be made in respect of Anglo Irish Bank and having regard to the full nature and extent of the guarantee. He leads us to believe that the decision was taken in the national economic interest. Nothing I have heard since September 2008 convinces me that was the case. I believe that the Taoiseach and the Government made that decision in September 2008 not in the best economic interest of the nation but in the best personal interests of those vested interests who I believe the Government was trying to protect on that occasion.

That is wrong.

I believe the decision was made to save the skins of a number of individuals, some of whom were connected to Fianna Fáil——

The Deputy believes in the tooth fairy.

Who are they? Name them.

——and whose property interests and prosperity were bound up with the fortunes of Anglo Irish Bank. I believe that is why the decision was made and I have heard nothing to the contrary since then. That is why I am asking the Taoiseach to publish all the advice he had available to him on that occasion. If my belief is correct, and I have not been convinced to the contrary, that decision was an act of economic treason for which this country is now paying very dearly.

Yesterday, we got a very big bill for Anglo Irish Bank. That rotten institution acted as a piggy bank for property speculators, was described in strident terms by the Minister for Finance as having been reckless in the manner in which it conducted its business and has caused the huge problem we now face in our economy. We will get the new unemployment figures in a few minutes. People have lost their jobs as a result of this. This bill is equal to the sum total of the pay cuts and pension levy in the public sector.

The responsibility is on the Taoiseach to explain why it was necessary to provide Anglo Irish Bank with the extensive and broad guarantee that has now landed us in a situation whereby it will cost €40 billion to keep it going and even more to wind it up.

I have had respect for Deputy Gilmore as a Deputy down the years.

Is it fading now?

It is reciprocated.

If, as he says, this respect is reciprocated I want to tell him very sincerely that in my 25 years in politics I have been beholden to nobody. Every decision I ever made in the privileged positions I held in this and other offices has been in the best interest of my country as I saw it. I accept that in a democratic debate, irrespective of how arduous or tough it may be, people may hold contrary opinions but I will not be accused of seeking to commit treason against my country.

Hear, hear.

I consider that to be beyond the Pale. I understand that people are angry about what has happened, and rightly so, but I also have the responsibility to say that anger in itself is not a policy. We have to fix this and move on. We have to make sure the country can employ people and has the prospect of growth, businesses with access to credit and a banking system that is fit for purpose.

Money is being bled from the people.

The Deputy should be under no illusion about the motivation behind every decision I have made during the difficult times in which I have held this office, irrespective of whether he agrees with them. They were the very same, laudable motivations that would have moved him had he been in my position. I would never come into this House to accuse another Irishman of what he accused me.

That was a lame round of applause.

Publish the advice.

The second point I wish to make——

Publish the advice.

Deputy Gilmore, please.

I am a politician and I know how it works. I can see the opportunity which the Opposition wishes to grasp in terms of seeking to inflict political damage. I can defend myself by arguing and debating. I am well able to look after myself when it comes to that.

Defend the people.

Deputy Durkan, allow the Taoiseach to continue.

However, I also know the game that is being played here.

It is not a game.

A game is being played.

It is beyond a game.

The game the Deputy is trying to play involves accusing me of economic treason on the basis that I am beholden to some unnamed people who were in the property business and that is what my party and I stand for.

Publish the advice.

I will not accept that because it is not true. As regards the question of publishing advice, we were sitting down in a room that night to decide what decisions were to be taken. It was not a question of going around looking for papers or looking to see if there were options. We sat down to consider the decision that had to be taken before the opening of business the next morning to ensure this economy did not go completely.

The Taoiseach sat down with the people that caused the problem.

That was the level of decision I had to make and I was not prepared to take a risk with this economy in any respect. I took advice on that and we made the political decisions conscientiously.

It was done with the people that caused the problem.

A political decision is right.

Let me further state that when it came to early 2009 and we had to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank, if we had not put capital into that bank at that point, what would have happened? We would have had to face the sort of bills which the Minister, Deputy Lenihan, has pointed out——

Stick with the guarantee. That was a bad decision.

That reality remained, it was the same yesterday and there is a requirement to do the same today.

The chickens are coming home to roost.

A suggestion is being made that the choice was between zero, let it go to the wall or to put money into a bank to protect these unnamed benefactors the Deputies are talking about. That was not the choice. The choice was whether to find a solution that, unfortunately, involves having to make unpalatable decisions such as putting more money into the bank or a bigger bill than if we let it go to the wall. That is the story and the real choice.

Did the Taoiseach know then what he knows now?

What we are trying to do and what we are doing in respect of the comprehensive decision made yesterday is to say to the people that this is the solution to put this right, to fix the system, to ensure people have access to credit and to ensure the country can get back on the path of growth again. If we do not do that, if we did not do what we did yesterday and pursue it and deal with it in the way that we have dealt with it, then we would have a period of stagnation like we have seen in many other parts of the world where they did not deal with the banking crisis. Is it true to suggest that we in Ireland are the originators of all of this, even though 18 EU countries have had to recapitalise banks and hundreds of billions of dollars had to be recapitalised and guaranteed in the US system?

Here we go again; the same old story.

We would not be immune from this any more than anyone else. It is the case that we have had problems and we have had to deal with them but I will not accept the contention made by Deputy Gilmore in the questions about me and my motivation. The Deputy is entitled to disagree with me but he should not question my patriotism to my country.

The Taoiseach is standing idly by Deputy Bertie Ahern's antics.