LABOUR LEADER Eamon Gilmore repeated his charge of “economic treason” against the Taoiseach.

Brian Cowen had called on him to withdraw the accusation he made last year about economic betrayal, and said there “isn’t one shred of evidence for you to make that contention”.

However, the Labour leader insisted that “if your Government knew that Anglo Irish Bank was insolvent and you asked the Irish people, the Irish taxpayers, to bail it out and to pay the cost we are now paying for it, that was, and is, economic treason. I stand over that.”

During Leaders’ Questions, in which he repeated there had been no inappropriate contacts with chairman of Anglo Irish Bank Seán FitzPatrick, Mr Cowen told Mr Gilmore: “I am no economic traitor.”

He said: “I have sought to do this job to the very best of my ability with my colleagues in the common interest for the public good.”

There was no evidence to suggest economic treason “except to continue with the political narrative from which you have drawn a lot of reservoir of votes for the last two years at our expense or at my personal expense to suggest that I am an economic traitor”.

Mr Cowen told Mr Gilmore that “as a colleague whom I don’t personally dislike, despite the severity of that criticism, there is no basis in fact for that contention and it should be withdrawn”.

People should get away “from the politics of smear” that “you have continued and which you have refused to withdraw that I made decisions or the Government I led made decisions that were about protecting personal interests rather than defending the common good and defending our country at a time of serious financial crisis. I reject that assertion with contempt.”

Mr Gilmore said he had never made a personal attack on the Taoiseach but “if your Government knew that Anglo Irish Bank was insolvent and you asked the Irish people, the Irish taxpayers, to bail it out and to pay the cost we are now paying for it, that was, and is, economic treason”.

He said the reason for the interest in the content of Mr Cowen’s talks with the bank chairman playing golf and at dinner was that “on every previous occasion we’ve asked you about your state of knowledge of where Anglo Irish Bank was at, and how big of a hole it was in and whether it was insolvent, you never told us about any contacts that you had with Mr FitzPatrick or with the senior officers of the bank”.

He said “you’re playing golf with Mr FitzPatrick and you have led us to believe that you were constructing some kind of Chinese wall down the fairway between you and Mr FitzPatrick, but you never discussed bank business. Frankly I would find it quite extraordinary; I would even blame you more if you didn’t discuss the bank business with Mr FitzPatrick.”

Mr Cowen said “we did not discuss Anglo Irish Bank business at all, at all. You can be as smart and as smarmy and as cynical as you like. I can only tell you the truth, and that is the answer to that question.”