Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I am not prepared to countenance default on senior debt for several reasons. First, half of the funding costs in Ireland for enterprise is funded from within Ireland. It is very important that Deputies acknowledge that. Ireland is not an Iceland which has somehow acquired a series of foreign obligations and saddled them on its taxpayers. Half of the funding requirement in our banking system is domestically sourced and 80% of the sovereign funding requirement for Ireland is externally sourced. Therefore, maintaining confidence in financial markets is an important issue for this country.

I will not come in here and talk lightly about defaulting on senior debt because, as a country, we are not doing that. It is not on the agenda. Were it on the agenda and had Fine Gael won the vote the other night, there would be an immediate loss of confidence in the country. It is easy to posture with a policy like that at present.

See this speech in context