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The Taoiseach is under increasing pressure to correct the Dáil’s record for its controversial comments on the bank bailout.
The Labor Party has joined Sinn Féin in asking Micheál Martin to correct Dáil’s record after he claimed Irish banks did not receive a bailout.
Yesterday, Martin said in the Dáil: “The banks were not rescued. The shareholders of the banks were not rescued” and instead “the state took action.”
“That is not a popular thing to say, but it is a fact.”
Labor TD Brendan Howling called the comments “strange”, adding that the Taoiseach “has to think about what it is saying. And, you know, you can never reinvent history. ”
He said: “I mean, by any simple understanding of English, the Irish people bailed out the banks in 2008.”
Agreeing that the Dáil record should be corrected, Mr. Howlin said, “I mean, sometimes, in the teeth of questioning, you say things that you have to think about again.
“I think that episode was so painful and it has been so painful for the Irish people over the next decade. We have to be very honest about it, ”Howlin told RTÉ’s Claire Byrne program.
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 the bank bailout cost Irish taxpayers € 66.8 billion due to Fianna Fáil’s disastrous management of the economy.
“The Taoiseach should correct Dáil’s record.”
Martin’s comments came after Solidarity-PBP TD Richard Boyd Barrett raised the ongoing Debenhams dispute and claimed that the government couldn’t put money on the table because it would set a precedent but is willing to bail out the banks.
Earlier today, State Minister for Skills and Higher Education, Niall Collins, defended the Taoiseach’s comments and accused Mr. Boyd Barrett of presenting a “stupid narrative” and said he is living in a “fantasy land.”
He said “it’s okay” for Boyd Barrett to present certain narratives about banks because “he doesn’t have to worry about the economy.”
Collins said: “Micheál Martin was clearly responding to a hint by Richard Boyd Barrett that the owners or shareholders of the banks were bailed out, and that did not happen, that was not the case, as we know, shareholders took a big hit when the banks almost collapsed, and indeed some of them collapsed.
“The banks were capitalized by the state, the state took capital in the banks,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.
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