Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

It is not the only ransom note which the ECB has sent. It had the character of a ransom note. It was a series of requests for austerity measures with a clear implication that the ECB would not buy bonds if they were not implemented. I asked about that letter to explore the undemocratic role which the ECB was then playing in the service of a model of authoritarian neoliberalism, which was strengthened with the process of European economic governance.

Mr. Draghi did not answer me on that day because there were many questions so thankfully we have space today to return to that question. In the past seven years there has been a lot of evidence to prove that the European Central Bank has been playing a fundamentally undemocratic role in the service of bankers as opposed to in the service of ordinary people. That ranges from its role in the removal of elected governments in Italy and in Greece in November 2011 and its role in foisting European bankers' debt on people in this country, for which we are still seeing billions of euros burned by the Central Bank of Ireland on an annual basis as a consequence of that, and it includes the strangulation of the Greek banking system in 2015 in order to try to ensure an outcome of a democratic referendum.

I return to that question today and ask how Mr. Draghi defends the role the European Central Bank has played over the course of the past decade and its fundamentally undemocratic character and does he intend for that kind of role to continue.