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

Mr. Gallagher, you outline in your statement that there was "no fundamental legal or constitutional impediment to introducing legislative measures for further burden sharing." Can you throw a little light then on what happened subsequently? We had evidence yesterday from Mr. Corrigan of the National ... formerly of the National Treasury Management Agency writing to the Minister for Finance in November 2010 at a later stage outlining €20 billion and €12 billion tranches of various kinds of debt which he felt that an aggressive approach should be taken to reducing that liability. So did the Government decide of its own volition not to introduce burden sharing or was there pressure from the European institutions?