Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The point has already been alluded to that it was a pity we did not get this deal or even ask for such a deal because the other side of the equation is that people did profit and are profiting from our distress and from purchasing our bonds at discounted rates and making the full whack on them because they knew we were going to pay every cent back at the point of redemption. The Government had made that clear. Europe decided not to offer such a deal and we decided not to ask for a similarly benign deal. That is shameful. Therefore, it seems reasonable we should do this for Greece but it is an awful pity we did not ask for the same for ourselves. Mr. Ó Brolcháin said the difference between the two situations is that there was conditionality on Greece getting this deal but there was conditionality on us too in terms of what we did or did not get, depending on how one looks at it. Is it not true that we had lots of conditions attached?