Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On another subject, there is an amazing contrast between the attitude of regulators, financial authorities and so on, and, indeed, Governments, towards the economic crisis this time around and their attitude towards the previous one. We are now talking about things that we were told after the crash in 2008 absolutely should not and could not be done, namely, borrowing to keep people in work and to stimulate the economy. Does Mr. Makhlouf accept there is an inherent critique of the failure of austerity in the policies now being pursued, and indeed in the fiscal and monetary policy being pursued throughout Europe? To some extent, I welcome that, but is there potentially something reckless about it as well? We refer to our debt position. If we look at debt to GNI* rather than debt to GDP, we are in a very precarious debt position. The Minister for Finance talked earlier about the potential for bond market vigilantes to start to take advantage of this situation. If that is so, we could be in very dangerous waters, which the Central Bank and the NTMA seem remarkably calm about, considering the attitudes that were taken ten years ago towards all this.