Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)

It is hugely important.

With regard to whether we sought a debt write-down, the Minister for Finance had informal but high level contacts with the ECB, with Mr. Jean-Claude Trichet and with other member states and finance ministers. It was made abundantly clear that there was no question of a write-down being agreed in a mutual sense at this time. There has been some criticism of my party, and it has been claimed that we made commitments before the general election to default unilaterally on the debt. We did not. It would be irresponsible ever to suggest that a country in a bailout programme should default on its debt. We committed to try to write down debt through a multilateral process. It did not work. It may work in the future. Who knows? At this time we are not looking for any such debt write-down.