All I can say at this hour of the morning is that I hope that poisoned chalice everybody refers to is full of Red Bull. Otherwise, we will have some difficulty getting through the next hour or so.
There have been frequent references to how inadvisable it is to have people making critical decisions in the middle of the night. For the record, our junior doctors are one group of people in this country who make critical decisions in the middle of the night. I hope this message is sinking in with people who are a little sleepy in both Houses tonight.
As a doctor, I have patients who will get second opinions. In general, the opinions will point in roughly the same direction. There will be nuanced differences. The extraordinary thing about the world in which I have been living for the last year and a half and in dealing with economists, planners and so forth is the unbelievably, widely divergent opinions one hears. The medical equivalent of the different economics opinions we get would be somewhat similar to one doctor telling a patient they should have an operation and another doctor saying that they should become an opera singer. It is extraordinary how unbelievably diverse the opinions are.
In the middle of all this I, as an amateur, found out today that I must take part in this critical debate and cast a vote on the liquidation of the IBRC. The reality is it will make no difference because we all know how the votes will go tonight. We are being told there is a need to make the deal tonight or something very bad will happen tomorrow. That something very bad will somehow involve the potential loss to the State of assets worth up to €14 billion. As a result, we are rushing this and not considering it. We are giving the Minister increased powers in the middle of the night and taking away powers from the courts. We are doing a raft of things which are really only appropriately done in an emergency. In fact, in seeking a precedent for this in history, I found only one. It was what Abraham Lincoln had to do in 1861-2 when states started to secede. He basically suspended chunks of the US constitution in the middle of the night, more or less, to save the republic. Is that the level of emergency we are facing tomorrow? This is what troubles me and the Minister must clarify it.
The issue, as I understand it, is that we have been told over the past six years that the former Anglo Irish Bank, now the IBRC, is basically a failed, zombie bank which is on life support and has no money or assets. Suddenly, it is some type of critical national assets reserve of €14 billion, all of which we might lose tomorrow if we do not make these decisions tonight. I am very troubled by this. I can understand how, on paper, there might be assets in the IBRC which are worth €14 billion. I presume most of them are apartment blocks or houses. It is not a bunch of threepenny pieces in a bank account, whereby people can form queues tomorrow and take them out of the bank. I do not believe the assets are that movable or liquid, necessitating this level of emergency.
Furthermore, there is a big elephant in the room. It is interesting to hear the speeches tonight referring to the deal. There is no mention of a deal in the Bill or in the Minister’s speech. We are discussing a Bill which will enable the Minister to liquidate the IBRC. The elephant in the room is that there is clearly some type of quid pro quo involved. There is a worst case scenario if we do not pass this Bill, and it might not just be the mythical €14 billion. It might also be that we could undo our deal. Again, I am troubled by this. I believe that the potential losses tomorrow are a great deal less than €14 billion. I do not know enough about this but the arguments advanced in the Dáil tonight from Deputy Stephen Donnelly and others were that there is a real worst case scenario in the long term as a result of passing the Bill and that there is a down side to changing the nature of our debt to something which becomes non-negotiable and intrinsically sovereignised. We are being asked to play a game of chicken tonight. There might well be some level of loss tomorrow so in return we are taking some, as yet unquantifiable, risk of a major loss or, perhaps, a benefit at some stage in the future.
With respect, I do not believe the case has been made sufficiently strongly to me that we must rush this through as an emergency tonight. Consider the quality of the thoughtful analysis that Senator Barrett was able to do in a few hours today. He is sitting on my left and he is one more PhD economist than was available in the entire Department of Finance when it made the biggest mis-decision in the history of the State. I do not know how many PhD economists were in that Department today and yesterday addressing the questions at issue or analysing them as thoughtfully as my colleague has. After much thought and soul searching, I will oppose this Bill.
