Mr. Dan O'Brien:

I am not sure the IMF specifically mentioned a "write-down". I did not read the entire paper but I am not sure it referred to "write-down". Debt relief can come in many forms. Write-down is to disappear the money, which means the lender will never get the money back. As such, the debt is removed from the balance sheets of the lender and the receiver. One can make debt sustainable in many ways. If the Deputy were to lend me €10 million, in respect of which I was not required to make any repayment for ten years and thereafter only needed only to repay €1,000 per annum, I would be crazy not to accept that because effectively a large part of it would be free money. Any amount of debt is sustainable. What is at issue is how the repayments are structured.

Greece, Ireland and Portugal have already had a series of debt relief changes, which have driven down the cost of servicing their debt. For political reasons, in many of the creditor countries a write-off is not going to happen. However, debt relief along the lines of what has happened, including lowering of the reservicing costs, stretching out of payments, in terms of having an effect on an economy can have just as good an effect. It is possible to help a country by providing an interest rate holiday and not requiring any repayment until after five years when, hopefully, its GDP-income will have increased and everything will be much easier to deal with.