Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I find this extraordinary, given that we have been told the diplomatic support has been lined up for the last three years since the Government took office. I believe genuinely that the Government intends to drag this out in the hope that there will be public fatigue, the shares in AIB can be sold to the market for €12 billion and there will then be no real reason to apply to the ESM, the rules of which are strict and difficult to apply retroactively. Even if we were to wind back the clock to 2008, there is no guarantee that we would get all that money from the ESM as we would have had to inject some of our own capital to bring the banks up to a 4.8% core tier 1 ratio. We would then have to have a bail-in and, at that point, we would get money back. Is it the case that the rules could be so restrictive in terms of retroactive recapitalisation that it would be less beneficial to apply to the fund than to sell the shares on the open market?