Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No. The question is if the Irish Government hadn't honoured the debt it had taken on board by sovereignising the banks' debts, and had left it be burnt. The earlier discussions we had this morning with Mr. Chopra and others are very clear that there was both a banking crisis and a fiscal crisis in Ireland, and Ireland was going to enter a structural programme regardless. The nature of a structural programme is that you are now with a lender of last resort - that is, the only person that can give you money or is prepared to give you money. But as you exit the bailout programme, other lenders become available, as has been witnessed in Ireland where we returned to the bond markets and bonds got cheaper over a period of time.