Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

They are similar. We will forget that the Taoiseach stated we were funded through to the end of 2013. We will forget that the Minister for Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, stated we were funded for all eventualities through to the end of 2013. We will park those comments to one side, as they clearly did not know the figures. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, stated that we were funded through to the second half of 2013 based on the figures he presented. Perhaps I caught them wrong, but he indicated that the amount of the Exchequer deficit plus the maturing debt up to the end of 2013 will be €75.5 billion. The amount of money available to the State will be €65 billion if we are allowed to use some of the bank recapitalisation money for sovereign purposes. This would leave a deficit in 2013 of €10.5 billion.

In 2013, the deficit plus the maturing debt will be €20 billion, there or thereabouts. We will not have enough to get us through to the second half of 2013. We know what is fixed. The income from the EU-IMF programme and the maturing debt are fixed. The optimistic projections of the Department of Finance, the Government and the programme in terms of economic growth were based on an unemployment rate of just over 400,000, but the actual figure is approximately 40,000 in excess of that.

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