Noonan notes irony of Government led by FF giving up sovereignty

FINE GAEL finance spokesman Michael Noonan said there was an irony in a Fianna Fáil-led government surrendering the State’s sovereignty.

“For years it posed as the super-green patriots and the uncompromising republicans,” Mr Noonan, said. An inept Government, through its arrogance and avarice, had been responsible for the sovereignty loss.

He added that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan should be ashamed and his colleagues should share it.

He quoted from the editorial in yesterday's Irish Timesasking "whether this is what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side".

He added: “In every crisis in Ireland, sooner or later, a clown emerges. Last night in Dromoland Castle, the Minister, Deputy Batt O’Keeffe, took over this role.

“He assured his audience that the crisis was nothing more than a game of poker by saying: ‘We’ve got to play poker over the next couple of days to see what cards these people have to play . . . We would like to see the colour of their money.’

“I am sure his audience from Silicon Valley, in Dromoland Castle, was suitably impressed.”

Mr Noonan said Mr Lenihan had no cards left. “His colleagues, over the weekend, with their incredible denials, embarrassed the nation and I am afraid their denials did not work. The other strategy the Minister has drawn from poker is bluff, and he is the greatest proponent of bluff I have ever seen in this House.”

He accused Mr Lenihan and Taoiseach Brian Cowen of bluffing for weeks.

“They will not speak plainly or share the nation’s grief with the people who elected them or tell them what lies ahead.

“This morning was a classic example of the Government’s ineptitude when the governor of the Central Bank felt he had an onus to come out and explain what was happening in the absence of any explanation from the elected Government.”

Prof Patrick Honohan, he said, had told the people what the Taoiseach, under questioning on Wednesday, failed to tell the House.

Mr Noonan claimed the origins of the crisis were in the Government’s disastrous banking policy.

“It was warned in detail by Fine Gael, which for two years has argued that Anglo Irish Bank should be wound down in an orderly fashion.”