FORMER FINE Gael leaders Garret FitzGerald and Alan Dukes are broadly supportive of the Government’s approach to the economy, Green Party Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Eamon Ryan told delegates.
Mr Ryan said there had been some comment in the past week on the merits of the government led by Garret Fitzgerald in the mid-1980s but as someone who lived through the emigration and unemployment of that time, he had learned some real lessons as to what we needed from our government.
“Firstly, that a country is ill-served by a government unwilling or unable to take the tough decision that are sometimes needed. The stalemate that existed between the Fine Gael and Labour coalition partners around some of the hard decisions of that time served neither their parties nor the people,” he added.
Mr Ryan said the second lesson came from what Fianna Fáil did at the time. In opposition they fought against every single cutback, but in 1987, once on the other side of the Dáil chamber, they went ahead with even bigger cutbacks than they had opposed months earlier.
“We need to learn from such lessons as we grow as a country and that experience from the 1980s has informed how we have acted in Government over the last two years.
“Alan Dukes and Garret Fitzgerald have more experience than most with financial crises. Perhaps that it is why they have supported the banking decisions taken by this Government over the last year, even when that ran counter to their own party,” said Mr Ryan.
He said Fine Gael’s position effectively called for a default on debts, which would carry real risks.
“I can understand why people ask the simple question, why not just let Anglo go or let the bondholders take all the pain. The reality is that those subordinated bondholders who did take a risk by putting money into the bank have and will lose out. The option of defaulting on the senior bondholders would be a different matter.”
The Minister said Ireland would have to tell the European Central Bank and a variety of pension funds and other banks that they were not going to get back the money they had put on deposit.
“We would then have to liquidate all the banks loans at firesale prices rather than separating them out and profiting from the performing loans and winding down in an orderly way the ones that will make a loss.”
He said Labour’s approach was not credible. “Are they really saying in September 2008 that they would have let our banking system go? Did they really want to bring us along the route that the people in Iceland have had to take? They seem to have learnt nothing from the 1980s if they believe that the way out this financial crisis is to spend money that we don’t have.”
Mr Ryan said the coming week would show the extent of the repairs needed in the banking sector. The problem could be managed effectively, he added.