I also want to deal with the question of Bank of Ireland. The Minister for Finance described it as a phased exit from the State’s stake in the bank. What that translates as is a process of full privatisation. After having bailed out the banks when they were in difficulty, fattened them up with public funds and returned them to profitability, we now propose to hand them back fully over to the private market which crashed them and caused the crisis in the first place. It is a disastrous decision from the point of view of the workers in the banks, the customers and society as a whole. We have seen time and again the problems of privatised banking. The 2008 crisis should be a lesson to us all that never again should such massive economic power be in the hands of a tiny number of banks. The lesson is that banking should be democratically controlled-----

I thank the Deputy. His time is up.

-----a public utility in the interests of society, used for example to provide credit for people in terms of the housing crisis.

I am not so sure international academic research backs that up. There is no compelling evidence that state-owned banks historically produced better outcomes or results for economies or societies. Invariably, state-owned banks in different locations around the world did not lend more or more cheaply than privately owned banks. No model is perfect, as we know from various crashes over the centuries. There is no compelling evidence base or research to back up what the Deputy said. We are not handing anything back. The shares are being sold. The State has divested itself of quite a lot of its investment in the Bank of Ireland and it has generated about €5.9 billion as opposed to the €4.7 billion that was originally invested.

I thank the Taoiseach. His time is up.

That is before disposing of these shares.