Micheal Martin has admitted he "made a mistake" when insisting that the Government did not bail out the banks during the financial crash a decade ago.
The Taoiseach yesterday told People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett that the banks were not bailed out as Ireland battled economic crisis in 2010.
Today, however, Mr Martin rowed back on his comments, telling the Cork Echo he "misspoke" in the Dail "in the heat of battle."
"I misspoke yesterday in the Dáil and made a mistake in terms of how I articulated it," he said.
"Essentially, I was making the point that the shareholders... themselves weren’t bailed out.
"But obviously the banks – there was a huge rescue package for the banks, of course there was. We know that, in terms of both protecting depositors and protecting bond holders."
Back in 2010, Irish banks were given more than €64 billion in State liquidity, after the Government borrowed from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Mr Martin said today he was concerned that people think the Government is only looking out for the wealthiest in society – something he insisted is not the case.
He added that he "didn’t like the presentation that the far left have been making – that somehow Government wasn’t doing anything for them, or Government was ignoring them."
And the Taoiseach insisted the Government has "done everything we possibly can within the law" to help Debenham's workers amid their long-running protest over a redundancy package.
"What’s giving me a sense of anger is I think those on the opposite side know that too but have certainly created the idea that an awful lot more could be done which couldn’t be done.
"You can’t legally interfere with a liquidation. The government can’t legally tell revenue to forget about its obligations or indeed social protection.
“In fact the government is the only party to all this that stood up to the plate in terms of at least doing The statutory redundancy which was €13m in this case."
