Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It was a question that was raised and I did not fully answer it previously. Once we had got agreement that we invest 50% directly, I did not want simply to take the other 50% and use it to retire debt. As much as I am anxious to squeeze down the total quantum of debt, it would be almost a token and it would much more valuable if we could use it in a different way. We were thinking outside the box on how we could use that and it just came up in our discussions in Brussels - as I explained, what Greece was doing - to use it as a backstop to ensure other investors such as the European Investment Bank, which need either a State guarantee which would put it on balance sheet or a bank with a triple-A ranking and such banks are scarce and Ireland does not have any, for the leveraging of additional funding. Bluntly, we have not yet thought out that element of it in any great detail. I would welcome any ideas Deputy Donnelly might have on financial instruments.