Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Did the Minister make any attempts as the principal of the negotiators to have the bondholders bear some responsibilities and losses in the banks? Did the IMF indicate that it was not opposed to approaches being made on that? Could the Minister confirm that it was the European Commission that was not willing to adopt such an approach and that the Government agreed that the bondholders should bear no share of the losses in the banks?

In these discussions, in terms of democracy in this country, did the Minister offer at any stage - it is absent from the document - to provide any mechanism whereby the people in the banks, the regulators, and the Central Bank who were in default of their duty, would face any accountability of any kind in this country either through fora in the Houses of the Oireachtas and appropriate committees or through other accountability mechanisms that exist under the Constitution?

There are very tight proposals to have financial stability ceilings. We are to be monitored on a quarter by quarter basis, and on a month by month basis. The document provides for a list of actions to be performed. The intention is to introduce a medium-term expenditure framework with binding multi-annual ceilings on expenditure on each area. That is to be introduced by July 2011 and the reference is to a structural benchmark listed on page 34.

This issue arose in a paper by-----

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