Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

It is helpful and will become increasingly helpful as draw-down increases both on the sovereign side and with any potential additional draw-down on the banking side. A 1% reduction is a significant amount of money. This has also influenced the pricing on the new European stability mechanism, which will apply from 2013. There is a complex pricing blend but it ends up at approximately 1% less than the EFSF fund. That is progress and we need the price to be low for the bail-out as a whole. My major policy position is that whatever the negotiations are, the policy objective is to reduce the cost in total of the bail-out, whether on the sovereign or banking side.

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