The last miner to be rescued, Luis Urzua, center, gestures as Chile's President Sebastian Pinera, right, looks on after his rescue from the collapsed San Jose gold and copper mine

I'm sure I was not alone last week in drawing inspiration from the scenes in Chile. The human story was powerful and mood was infectious. As humans, we clearly have the strength and resolve to withstand and survive extreme challenges. Mere men entered the mine two months ago, but heroes emerged back to the surface. Chile seemed to grow as a nation through this crisis and it says a lot about its place in the world and the resolve of its people. The mine should never have collapsed, but that is not the point. Things that should never happen often do. The test of a person or a nation is what they do when these unexpected events happen. Chile passed this test. We are still sitting ours.

Watching these scenes, my thoughts turned to Ireland. The human resolve and strength of character shown in Chile can be an inspiration to all of us.

I feel the same way about the bravery being shown by the Icelandic courts in dealing with their mortgage problems. They are showing the courage to make the tough decisions by reorganising their mortgage market and restructuring their debt. We will have similar choices to make in the future. We can watch Iceland implement these reforms and can learn from their effects on the banking system, the economy and the property market.

There are glimmers of national solidarity here in Ireland. Last week was a good week – 11,500 people invested in the country through the National Solidarity Bond. These people are clearly making a statement and their show of support has been impressive in delivering €255m. If I were a foreign bond investor, I would be monitoring information like this as a way of checking our national resolve to deal with this financial crisis. If people are willing to invest in themselves, then their country should be a good bet for a bond investor. I was initially sceptical regarding this financial product, but I now see its value. The bond is about national solidarity, and not simply interest rates as I mistakenly thought when it was first announced. I hope to see this scheme grow as reflection of our commitment to ourselves. I'll be signing up next week.

But just as we appear to be moving on and dealing with issues from our recent past, our evil twin keeps raising its head and pulling us back. This evil twin is revenge and retribution. I fully understand the hatred for Anglo Irish Bank, but I cannot see the logic in driving people like David Drumm to seek bankruptcy protection in another jurisdiction. The entire banking system in Ireland failed, and has been bailed out by the government. I think we should be able to deal with this from within our financial system.

We clearly have a massive void in our legal system for dealing with financial failure and we need to overcome this. Financial failure is a systemic by-product of the money system that we operate under. It cannot be avoided, so we need to build our social and legal systems to accept and process it. Our financial system requires the constant creation of increasing amounts of money, and this money can only be generated by banks in the form of debt. This will surprise many people but it is an economic and financial fact. More than 95% of the money in circulation is created by somebody signing a loan and taking on debt. Our system of growth requires money creation through credit, and debt is the only way in which sufficient amounts can be created.

The current problem in the domestic economy is a lack of demand and stalling of credit creation triggered by the credit crunch. I know this sounds wrong, but more debt is required in the economy. The difference this time needs to be the application of this debt. It needs to be applied to the creation of export-focused and employment enterprises, rather than domestic construction. This does not seem to get getting through to the creators of money and credit – the banking system. We need a new business bank to replace Anglo and we need it fast. I am backing Eamon Gilmore on this issue with one amendment. It will need to be bigger than €10bn.