Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Moran and his team for attending. At the end of March 2011 I had a long conversation with him on the telephone. One of the two main elements challenging the economy is debt sustainability. It is not just Government or sovereign debt that is increasing as we merge private debt with social debt. I refer also to household and non-financial corporate debt. I am not happy that we are analysing the impact these levels of debt have on the capacity of households, businesses and the State to service debt levels. We are fooling ourselves vis-à-vis our creditors. The main creditors in the banking system are owed €100 billion, to the Eurosystem and the ECB and in emergency liquidity assistance to the Central Bank of Ireland. The capitalisation that took place in July 2011 moved in the wrong direction. To take the guts of €17 billion out of pension funds-----