The verdict, Taoiseach, is in. The evidence has been gathered. The analysis has been made. And the conclusion of the two recent reports into our economic crisis is devastatingly clear.

You, Brian Cowen, are guilty. Guilty of creating an economic disaster that will forever carry the logo: “Made by Fianna Fáil.”

If you had any integrity you would already have resigned. If you had any respect for the people whose lives you have destroyed you would already have called an election. But for you, the supreme political virtue, the only virtue, is loyalty to party. Party before country. Party before people. That is the Fianna Fáil way. But it is not my way.

And so I stand here today, on behalf of the Irish people whom you have chosen to ignore, to accuse you in their name.

I accuse you, Taoiseach, of being the architect in chief of our economy’s destruction. Of condemning our people to a lost decade of unemployment, misery and emigration.

I accuse you of hijacking our Republic and handing it over to a toxic circle of bankers, developers and speculators who, like a cancer, have sought to destroy our Republic from the inside out. I accuse you of attempting to deceive the Irish public about the causes of this crisis and your own responsibility for it.

Just over four weeks ago, you delivered a 7,000-word speech defending your economic record. Let me summarise what you said in four short words: “It’s not my fault.” That, Taoiseach, has been the mantra for your entire political career. “It’s not my fault.” When you were Minister for Health, you insisted that your abject failure to reform and improve our health services wasn’t your fault. Working there, you explained, was like working in Angola.

When your policies as Minister for Finance helped destroy our economy, you also denied all responsibility. It was, you argued, the fault of officials who gave you bad advice, of organisations like the IMF who failed to warn you. It was even, you claimed, the fault of the opposition.

When you became Taoiseach and our banks collapsed you very quickly identified the fall guy. It wasn’t you or your failed policies. No. It was all the fault of Lehman Brothers.

The pattern is clear. You’re the man who’s never there. You’re never there when there’s a problem. You’re never responsible when there’s a failure. You’re never to blame when things go wrong.

In all of this, you have shown yourself to be a true disciple of your mentor and guide, Bertie Ahern. A man who believed that all the cribbers and moaners, as he called them, should simply “commit suicide.” A man who appointed you as Minister for Finance because he knew that you would do whatever he required of you.

How right he was. From the moment you became Minister for Finance you did your master’s bidding and unleashed a series of reckless policies designed to do one thing and one thing only: To keep Fianna Fail in power. The record is clear and cannot be denied, even by you. You deliberately over-heated the economy and deliberately pumped up the property bubble.

• Over your four budgets, from 2005 to 2008, you increased spending by a massive 51% - more than twice the rate of growth in the economy.
• In order to finance this massive spending surge you did everything you could to ensure the property bubble lasted as long as possible. In 2005 you decided to extend massive tax reliefs for property developers past the election in 2007 against expert advice. In 2006, at the peak of the housing boom, you even assured buyers that Irish house prices were based on “strong fundamentals”.
In his devastating report on the banking crisis Patrick Honohan makes it very clear that this was a home grown crisis, created and nurtured by you. He says: “Macroeconomic and budgetary policies contributed significantly to the economic overheating… This helped create a climate of public opinion which was led to believe that the party could last forever.”

In their report Klaus Regling and Max Watson also make it clear that the banking crisis “was in crucial ways “home-made.” Official policies and banking practices added “fuel to the fire.”

“Fiscal policy, bank governance and financial supervision left the economy vulnerable to a deep crisis, with costly and extended social fallout.” By mid-decade “financial stability analysis should have sounded alarm bells loudly.”

You claim, Taoiseach, that no one shouted stop as you set us on the path to ruin. But you know that is not true.

• As far back as 2005 the IMF told you that house price overvaluation in Ireland “could not just be explained by economic fundamentals” while the ESRI warned you that a collapse in the housing market could have “serious” short to medium-term effects on economic growth. The New York Times, looking in disbelief at what was happening here, could only describe Ireland as the “Wild West of European Finance”
• By 2006 the Economist magazine warned you that Ireland was experiencing “the biggest bubble in history.” The same year Professor Morgan Kelly projected that property prices could fall dramatically, with catastrophic consequences for the banking sector. He wrote: “We have spent the last five years learning to believe that exports and competitiveness do not matter, and that we can get rich by selling houses to each other. We are likely to spend a painful few years as we unlearn that lesson.” How right he was.
In his report Patrick Honohan lays bear the bunker mentality that you and your Government had retreated into by 2007. The conclusions of the Financial Stability report of that year were, the Professor makes absolutely clear, based on a “selective reading of the evidence.”

“The central conclusion regarding a ‘soft landing’ was not based on any quantitative calculations or analysis. This appears to have been a ‘triumph of hope over reality’. More generally, a rather defensive approach was adopted to external critics or contrarians.”

The professor also demolishes the Fianna Fail line that no one was questioning your policies. He writes:

“For years many observers had raised some concerns publicly or privately, albeit sometimes in coded form, about the sustainability of the property boom, which was indeed dramatic by international standards.”

Fine Gael also consistently warned you that your mismanagement would lead to disaster. You ignored both our warnings. You ignored our proposals too. Proposals that would have halted the destruction. Proposals like:

• Ensuring the cost of public sector benchmarking be paid for from real reform and productivity improvements

• That Government stop creating new quangos and cut existing ones

• That all Government Departments be subject to annual efficiency targets

• That dubious capital projects like PPARS and eVoting be subject to published cost-benefit evaluations, avoiding the massive waste

• That the health bureaucracy be streamlined.

The results of your arrogant failure to listen to anyone who didn’t share you views are there for all to see:

• Ireland has experienced the most expensive crisis of almost any country. €74 billion pumped into the banks while credit is denied to thousands of businesses across the country

• Ireland has suffered the biggest loss of jobs of any OECD country, with over 250,000 fewer people at work now than in 2007. Over 100,000 young people have left Ireland since 2008

• Ireland has seen the biggest rise in our national debt. It’s tripled in two years, forcing painful cuts in services, pay and investment

• Tens of thousands of houses now lie empty in tax-driven developments built in the wrong places, while 200,000 young families find themselves trapped of negative equity. More than 30,000 are now unable to service their monthly payments.

But the bald statistics don’t tell the real story. They don't tell you about the families struggling to survive on one or no income. They don't tell you about the lack of hope of those burdened with the scourge of unemployment. Or about the despair of the weakest and most vulnerable in our society as the services they rely on are shut down.

This is your legacy, Taoiseach. An economy brought to its knees. A society torn apart. Your fault, Taoiseach. Those outcomes are the direct result of your policies and of a banking system you allowed to run wildly out of control. As late as September 2008, you were claiming that: “The Irish banking sector has very well secured loans…it is my intention to ensure that the Irish taxpayer will not be held liable in any way for any deficit that might occur in the even of there being a problem in the future.”

A few months later you were telling the Irish people that your Government would write any cheque the banks required. And that is exactly what you have done. You have written a cheque, on behalf of the Irish people, for close to €25 billion for Anglo Irish Bank and the Irish Nationwide Building Society, institutions that are effectively dead.

In fact nothing illustrates better the toxic triangle that existed between Fianna Fáil, the developers and the bankers than the way you handled these two failed institutions. Directly under your nose they were allowed to convert from simple savings and loans institutions into State-backed gambling machines. Machines that were all too willing, in the case of Nationwide, to approve 100% plus loans to former Fianna Fáil Ministers without even the pretence of going through the usual credit-approval process.

Again the evidence from the Honohan and Regling reports and from other sources is absolutely clear: It was you, Brian Cowen, who authorised the Dublin Docklands Development Authority to transform itself from a planning body into a development agency. An agency that borrowed massively from Anglo Irish Bank, resulting in taxpayer losses of up to €400m.

It was your party that appointed Sean Fitzpatrick and re-appointed Lar Bradshaw to the Board of the DDDA, despite the obvious conflicts arising from their membership of the Board of Anglo Irish Bank. It was you who dined with the board of Anglo Irish Bank in 2008, just before the bank's shares were placed with the golden circle of investors and the bank began to lose its deposits.

It was you and your Finance Minister that decided to guarantee not just depositors but risk investors in Anglo Irish Bank in September 2008 – a decision that cost the Irish taxpayer dearly and has been sharply criticised by the Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan.

The pattern is clear. At every point you did all in your power to protect the bank and its big investors, regardless of the cost to the Irish public. Your actions, Taoiseach, have not only damaged our economy but undermined vital public trust in the institutions of our democracy. “Golden Circle”. “Crony Government”. “Cosy Capitalism”. “The Galway Tent.” They all describe same thing: The take-over of our Republic by the rich and powerful, aided and abetted by you and your Government.

A Republic is not just a form of government or a set of institutions. It is a living, breathing thing nourished by the dreams and hopes of it people. Its lifeblood is the trust that binds us together. That allows us to say: “We are all in this together.”

It is that trust, Taoiseach, which you have destroyed. You have divided Ireland between the insiders, who manipulate the system for their own benefit, and the vast majority of our citizens that are left powerless on the outside. You have divided Ireland between those at the top, who never take responsibility or face the consequences, and the hard-working families of this country who must now pay the price for your mistakes.

In a Republic the people are supposed to be supreme. Based on that simple criterion the Irish Republic, which my party was proud to declare, is now a Republic in name only.

Now, Taoiseach, we stand – thanks to you – in the wreckage of a great economy. Right around this country, families live in a world of shrinking hopes and withered dreams. Without vision, we perish – and you, together with all those who surround you on the Government benches – are without vision.

The people of Ireland yearn for leadership. For direction. For a sense of hope and possibility. For a roadmap to recovery. You have not even bothered to try to provide any of these. Back in 2004 a member of this House defined good government as follows: “Good government does not mean responding blindly to headlines or being pressured into half-responses. It means sensible policies, soundly based, with realistic, achievable and prioritised, targets.”

That member of the House was you, Taoiseach, and you stand now condemned by your own words. Based on your own definition of good government you have failed and failed again. In fact, you have turned poor, unaccountable Government into an art form.

Your answer to the banking crisis is to write “whatever cheques are necessary” to bail out professional investors in banks, leaving the country in massive debt.

Your answer to the fiscal crisis is to hike up taxes and cut services, pay and investment, while ignoring the bloated structures of politics and Government.

Your answer to the competitiveness crisis is to encourage cuts in pay for low earners, while ignoring the costs of services administered or regulated by Government.

And whenever you are queried on your policies you rely for endorsement on the very same banks, stockbrokers and institutions that you now blame for giving you the wrong advice as Finance Minister. To paraphrase a great playwright: Your Government is barren as a brick. Barren as a brick.

• As the architect-in-chief of our economic crisis, how can you come here today and ask this House to vote confidence in you?
• As the man who has consistently denied any major responsibility for our economic crisis, how can you claim that you have any moral authority to sit in that seat?
• As the man who helped destroy trust in the institutions of our Republic, how can you possibly ask the Irish people to place their trust in you?
Only one honourable action remains to you. Go. Go now. Go before you can damage this great nation further. In God’s name, go.

Ends

Fine Gael