Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, the quickest to achieve this comes down to we do with our deficit. The factor that most quickly leads to debt accumulation is the running of large budget deficits year after year. We are not going in that direction and our objective for next year, as the committee knows, is to balance the books. In the years that follow we will run a moderate surplus, just as we have at other points in our history. This would be the quickest way of incrementally taking down our debt. I answered a question from Deputy Michael McGrath in the Dáil yesterday about the shares we hold in other Irish banks. I indicated to him that I have no immediate plans to proceed with any further sales. In any event, I cannot go any further with AIB because we are in what is known as the lockdown period. It would be a bit disingenuous of me to say these are the sales that are going to reduce our debt immediately given that I said yesterday that I would not do that.