Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

It is disgraceful that this important piece of legislation is being rammed through in two days. Frankly, it makes a joke of the Government's pre-election talk of transparent government, renewing democracy and all the other hyperbole we had prior to the election. The legislation has far-reaching consequences for probably hundreds of thousands of policyholders for many years to come. It will have damaging and far-reaching effects on our already crippled economy.

On the substantial legislation and what is being proposed, the Taoiseach today in responding to concerns about the legislation and the speed with which it was being pushed through suggested that what was motivating it was a desire to protect the 1,600 jobs in the Quinn Group. From the point of view of the United Left Alliance, and I suspect the majority of those who are critical of the Bill, we are just as concerned to maintain the jobs in the Quinn Group as anybody else is, or at least the jobs of ordinary workers and their families who depend on them. The issue is not about who is most concerned for the jobs and families of ordinary people, it should go without saying - from our point of view it does go without saying - that we are as committed as the Government is to protecting those jobs.

The question is whether what is being done is the best way to do it from the point of view of the cost to the public and the effect on the wider economy. I attended a briefing in the Department of Finance yesterday and have been trying to follow the labyrinthine twists and turns of the Quinn debacle in recent years. Frankly, one's head would be fried by the complexity of this whole business. Perhaps part of the purpose of the legislation is to obscure something behind veils of complexity, which is in reality just another shafting of the members of the public and policyholders who end up picking up the tab. My summary of what this is about is that it is yet another mechanism to ensure that ordinary people pick up the tab for the sharp practice, probably criminal practice, of corporate tycoons such as Mr. Quinn, the people running Anglo Irish Bank and the political system that allowed it to happen. In the face of the rampant greed of those people, yet again the ordinary citizen is being asked to pick up the tab. That is what the legislation is really about.

The bottom line of this rather complex piece of work is that for the next ten years, or possibly longer, ordinary policyholders will have to pay higher insurance. It is money they cannot afford when they are already being hit with higher ESB prices and gas prices, levies such as the universal social charge and the impact of unemployment for the hundreds of thousands who have lost their jobs, and the impact of welfare cuts. People are already being hit by those costs and on top of that they are going to be hit with higher insurance costs.

The small and medium enterprises the Government says it is so committed to assisting will be further hit, damaged and crippled by higher insurance costs which they simply cannot bear. The other costs they have to shoulder at the moment are already driving hundreds and thousands of businesses out of business and the proposed legislation is likely to do further damage in that regard. All of that is being done to cover the losses of Mr. Quinn. I am not an expert in the legal and financial side of these matters but with my relatively untutored eye it looks as if what he did was criminal. There is no other way to describe it. The assets of Quinn Insurance, which were supposed to cover claims by policyholders were being used to essentially cover other loans, speculative loans such as casino gambling on property, other deals and of course on the Anglo Irish Bank debacle. Ordinary people are being asked to pick up the tab for that.

Meanwhile, we have a situation where all the burden is being shouldered by ordinary citizens and the economy but we are going to get nothing out of it. As if that is not bad enough, we cover Mr. Quinn's losses, nurse the potentially profitable bits of the company back to health and then we give them away to a multinational. It is absolutely extraordinary. Liberty Mutual would not be interested in the profitable bits of Quinn Insurance, primarily operating in this State, if it did not believe a lot of money could be made. If one takes out the gambling and sharp practice of Mr. Quinn and the mismanagement, malpractice and gambling that led to the losses there is underneath it all, at least in this country, a fundamentally viable business. That seems crazy in the extreme. If we are going to cover the losses, give €200 million to Anglo Irish Bank bondholders then at the very least we should own something at the end of the process. If, for the cost we are bearing, the public owned Quinn Insurance it would guarantee the jobs or would give us a far better chance of guaranteeing the 1,600 jobs. In that situation we could also have some control over insurance premia so that they do not do further damage to the economy and we could potentially generate revenue for the State.

Instead what we are doing is covering Mr. Quinn's losses, protecting the bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank, unbelievably giving them €200 million, and an important fact for the public to digest, paying consultants enormous amounts of money to manage the heist against the people. One of the consultants currently at the Quinn Group to advise presumably on this sort of deal is Mr. McKillop, who is being paid €915 an hour, €7,000 a day. If it is a five day week, that is €35,000 a week, adding up to nearly €2 million a year. Who is paying for that? We are. The policyholders and public are paying for it. It is unbelievable. It is like a honey pot for those over-paid consultants. Members of the Quinn family are still in situ. There is no provision in the Bill to go after the €200 million given to Mr. Quinn's family or to go after the other means by which the family is trying to syphon off its personal wealth.

It is unbelievable that in 2008, before the whole collapse took place, Mr. Quinn - who may have been in the know about what was going to happen - could give €200 million to his four children to increase their personal wealth portfolio. These euphemisms are about taking vast amounts of money from us to give to his children and protect and insulate himself against what was coming further down the line to make them obscenely wealthy. Where is the Government's will to introduce emergency legislation? I would be happy if the Government rammed through such legislation designed to go after the Quinn family's wealth and other assets, instead of making ordinary people pay for the greed of Mr. Quinn, while also protecting bondholders in Anglo Irish Bank. It is shameful.

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