Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

Yes, but when they are finalised what legal basis will they have under the European treaties, our Constitution and in Irish law? Are they an international agreement and, if not, why not?

I thought the Minister's speech was sad. He is still going on with this challenge to the Opposition. He challenges us to advise how we are going to pay the teachers, the nurses and the gardaí if we don't take the money from Europe. He says there is no alternative and he challenges us to come u with one. That is pathetic debating society stuff. The Minister is like a person who went from dry land to a ship, then to a lifeboat and from there to a life preserver. He is now spluttering on the shore as they resuscitate him, yet he asks us to explain what we would do. It is a silly argument. We have spent the last two and a half years explaining that we would not have got into this position in the first place because we had an entirely different attitude to banking policy.

It is principally the Minister's banking policy, associated with his fiscal policy, that has destroyed this country. It has destroyed the economy along with the jobs and future of so many families. It has also brought in the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission who are knocking on the door. It has sorely diminished our sovereignty. The Minister is wrong to challenge the Opposition to come up with an alternative when it is clear from the record of the House over the past three years that, on any reasonable interpretation of the Opposition policies enunciated here, we would not have got into this position. It is the most pathetic argument I have heard for a long time and it is unworthy of the Minister.

What surprises me about this situation is how rapidly it developed. I cannot understand how a Government that is doing its job could have been left in a situation where, in the words of the Minister for Justice and Law Reform,- they all got mugged by the European Central Bank over a two-week period. Since the infamous meeting of the Minister's parliamentary party in Galway, the fiscal correction jumped quickly from €3 billion to €6 billion. Meanwhile, the overall correction jumped from €7.5 billion to €15 billion. The Minister's position was then, and still is, that somehow or another it all sneaked up on him - he was mugged and got no notice of it.

See this speech in context