Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank both Professor Barry and Mr. McCarthy for their interesting presentations on this matter, of which we will not see the end any time soon.

Mr. McCarthy said countries get into trouble because they are not run very well. The corollary of that is countries get out of trouble because they are run very well. I am sorry Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett is not present to hear that comment. From a politically partisan perspective, much has to be said about the way this country has been run since we entered into a bailout programme and managed to exit it successfully.

The point was made that Ireland was the second bailout experiment, the first being Greece. The difference was that when it came to our turn, we had an adequate amount of financial support. The IMF had similar concerns and was not happy with the percentage point on our debt but we managed to use the European financial stability facility, EFSF, money to lower the interest rate, did a deal on the promissory notes and so on. In effect, we reprofiled our debt. Ordinary people recognise that when one takes out a mortgage on a house, one is reprofiling one’s debt, banking on the mortgage going down over time as one’s income improves, a reasonable level of inflation which will improve the value of one’s income over the long term and the value of that asset increasing over time. I do not see anything particularly wrong with the idea of reprofiling debt, assuming - I do not want to sound like Margaret Thatcher - a country behaves a bit like a household. In other words, it manages itself properly as a successful economic entity.

At the time of the first Greek bailout, its debt-to-GDP ratio was 120%. How much less was Ireland’s?