Mr. Seamus Coffey:

Carrying a high level of debt is dangerous. We saw how quickly governments in countries can, in a sense, end up not being able to borrow from financial markets or borrow to fund deficits or turn over debt. In 2007, we had what was considered a very low level of debt; yet three years later nobody would lend to us. At the current level of debt, people might not be looking through the figures and might say the debt-to-GDP ratio, which is close to 70%, looks quite good. If, however, they started analysing it more carefully and if we had trouble, they would realise we could find ourselves not being able to borrow independently and back with problems we simply want to avoid.