Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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It is getting very Jesuitical here: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Is Mr. Palmer saying that the EU bans Ireland from spending savings, not borrowings? The Strategic Investment Fund was built up over years. We are not borrowing it. If a family needs to spend money that it has saved, it does not add to its debt. Are the EU rules so severe that we cannot even spend money we have built up over years? That is what I asked earlier and I did not really get the answer. It is getting Jesuitical. The three witnesses are the experts yet they are not even able to point to one example of where this has happened. They mentioned some vague thing about France. If we have to break the EU rules to build houses for our people, I put it to them that we should break them but if they can tell us a different way that does not break them, I will be all ears.