Mr. Colm McCarthy:

It is a phenomenon with which we will all be professionally familiar. I will finish with a few comments on the implications of all this. A blame game has been going on for the past six months: the Greeks screwed up; the Greek Government did not do its negotiations properly; the finance Minister wore a leather jacket; his wife forgot to wear a helmet on her motorbike or whatever. Similarly, there have been allegations that the Europeans were engaged in blackguardism and blackmailed the Greek Government and all of that. That is just a blame game. What is interesting is whether the third programme passes the simple tests for a feasible and plausible rescue effort for a country that is in a mess. To claim to be involved in the financial rescue business and then for it to say it is really upset because the country it has been sent to is in a mess is kind of weird. Of course it is in a mess. That is why the country called it. Those in the ambulance business tend to find people who are injured when they are called out and they do not expect the callers to be able to drive the ambulance.

The explicit and unveiled threat last weekend of expulsion of a member of the eurozone was a pretty extraordinary event. I can quite understand why the Greek Government felt it had to capitulate. However, it creates a situation in which this common currency area is no longer seen as irrevocable by its leading member. I think that will create conditions of instability very quickly the next time some country gets into trouble. If that country is a big country such as Italy or France, the systems are retrievable but if it is a small country such as Portugal, Slovenia or Ireland, we now know that the small countries are expendable. It is a fact that every finance Ministry in Europe has prepared contingency plans for what they will do if this thing blows up. They will all deny it, for good reasons, but they all have them. If I were involved with one of these smaller countries, I would be dusting off those plans now. There is an increased risk the currency union will unscramble at some stage. It is now clear that the smaller countries will be deemed expendable in those circumstances. It has been a very bad week for Greece but it has been a bad week for the eurozone.