Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask Mr. Corrigan about the relationship between him and the Government. I do not want to personalise this but Mr. Corrigan is paid twice as much as the Taoiseach, and there are 47 people in the National Treasury Management Agency earning over €150,000 a year, in other words, more than most Ministers are earning. I wonder about the nature of this relationship. Who is advising who what to do and how to manage this situation? In terms of the various companies the NTMA has enlisted to run the small and medium enterprise, SME, funds, I know that previously it took advice from the Rothschild Group. I would be interested to know if it is still getting advice on the management of our debt crisis from the Rothschild Group, who are bondholders, or from the Carlyle Group, which is managing the SME fund. These are global asset managers. Are they advising the NTMA? Is that they circle in which NAMA moves? Obviously, those people would have the view that it would be unthinkable that we would repudiate the debt because they take the hit but our responsibility is to the citizens of this country. It is clear when we consider what is happening at the moment that the bond markets are happy with Ireland because the Government, the NTMA or both is telling them that we will pay them back every cent and will enforce whatever level of austerity and cuts on the citizens of Ireland that are necessary to pay them back. The bond markets express delight and buy Irish bonds because they know Ireland will do anything to give them back their money and make them a profit regardless of the cost to the Irish citizenry.