Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

They come in here and resolutely say there will not be debt forgiveness, as they call it. I do not call it that. The Governor, Professor Honohan, was prepared to underwrite a policy where the billionaire bondholders were bailed out on the backs of the Irish working class people, but he will not contemplate such relief for those who were their victims.

The national debt is about 120% of gross national product. The annual payments on interest are about €9 billion this year. How much of that is accounted for by funds borrowed for the bank bailout? The troika programme is supposed to be finished in about one month or two. The Irish economy continues to bounce along the bottom. Growth is minimal and austerity has had a devastating effect. Can the Governor give a guarantee that in 12 months or in two or three years, the financial markets will not look at this country and decide we are incapable of meeting our payments and so will not advance further funds, or raise interest levels to massive heights, forcing the country into another bailout, with massively punitive austerity policies? Can the Governor say that this is absolutely ruled out?