Mr. John Moran:

To put matters in context, the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, has explained that over the course of this year it needs to raise about €6 billion additional market funding. That will allow us to have funded the operation of the State to the end of 2014. We believe that is perfectly achievable in the current markets, but that is a very important platform from which to build an exit programme for the State after the end of the year when we will have drawn down all of the troika programme funding.

We then need to work with it in terms of the remaining profile of our debt because, obviously, when we have a repayment obligation coming up we must either go to the market or find an alternative way to source it. The repayment of the debt from the perspective of the State on the troika programme begins to start to bite at that stage. The idea is that if we can find ways in which we can defer the repayment obligations on those debts into the future, it allows us to have a lot less pressure in terms of the repayment obligations and, in effect, the markets respond to that.

The options 1 to 5 to which the Deputy referred are in effect a range of dates into the future in which we can do it. It has been explained that some of the options would involve pushing out the debt to a very forward date into the future, and others would involve simply dealing with some of what we call the peaks and troughs in the profile so that we would flatten them out. That would mean that in each of the years coming up over, say, the next ten years, the amount the NTMA would have to borrow from the markets would become a broadly level payment during the course of the years. Mr. Jim O'Brien is much more closely involved in it in terms of the European meetings, but the ability to say what that will mean for the budgetary process going forward is a little premature at this stage because in terms of what is happening in Europe, they are trying to examine a solution which would alleviate the repayment schedule for the Irish date and to do the same for the Portuguese debt at the same time. It is not possible for us to give any indication of what will happen.

More importantly, what is very difficult to do, and we saw that in the context of the IBRC situation as well, is to find a way of calculating the benefit for the State in respect of those because a number of different elements are at play. First, will the extension continue at the existing interest rates but to the extent it requires reissuance of debt by the Europeans to allow us to continue the funding longer? We will then be subject to market conditions at that time if the extension is the interest rate the Irish State would pay.

The other aspect that is very difficult is that the best way to describe the benefit of any of this, apart from the obvious market benefit of easing the repayment obligations, which is reflected in lower Government bond rates, is that we look at what we would have paid and compare it to the new interest rate. As we saw in the context of the IBRC, had we done that two days before the IBRC announcements we would have created a sense of a much greater benefit than if we did it two days later because the mere announcement of the deferral brought the interest rates on the Irish Government bonds down about 50 basis points. In some sense we could say there was less benefit in that transaction three days later, but it was actually the transaction that created the benefit. The maturities discussions that are ongoing are doing the same thing. Depending on the actual result of deferral, the amount of deferral and the interest rates, it could have an impact of a different magnitude on the Irish Government debt rates and, therefore, would change our budgetary process of itself. Mr. O'Brien might want to comment.