Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

He has. He met Timothy Geithner in March, he visited the United States again to discuss economic matters and he recently met the President of the United States. He knows, I know and the entire country knows that Ireland is on its knees as a result of the requirement placed on us to pay off the gambling debts of bankers and bondholders. Is the Taoiseach seriously telling the House that he got no inkling from Timothy Geithner or the US business people and politicians he met about the US Government's position of torpedoing a proposal that the bondholders should share some of the pain of the financial crisis they created and that we were being asked to pay for? That is extraordinary. I note-----

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