Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Whether the United States Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Geithner, did or did not make the particular remarks is not the issue. The fact is that the issue was flagged. As the Taoiseach's borrowed rhetoric in College Green soared to lofty heights, and no doubt he was concentrating on that, he also was looking at tens of thousands of citizens, the victims of the financial crisis. Should it have occurred to the Taoiseach to raise with the President of the United States, whose economic power stretches into all areas of the globe including the International Monetary Fund, the principle of whether the people of a state such as this should be forced to carry the burden for the failed gambles of European banks and whether the United States - as, the Taoiseach states, a friendly country - should support the people of a small state in asserting they have no responsibility to carry the bad debts of failed gamblers?

See this speech in context