Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Senator has asked me a question. Please let me answer. I remember lots of people saying that Ireland should go the way of Iceland, ignoring the fact that Iceland is not a member of a single currency zone like we are. The Icelandic economy is also fundamentally different in scale and composition to the Irish economy. We are significantly bigger and have a far more varied economy than has Iceland. I have not looked at it for a while for all of those reasons. I will have a look again on foot of this conversation. However, the key difference is that Iceland is not subject to EU banking rules like we are. Iceland may choose a particular course of action that is open to it but that may not be open to us because we are part of a banking union that is supervised by the Single Supervisory Mechanism.