Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

The Taoiseach did not answer the question. The Minister for Finance was very vocal in Washington. He said he would burn the Anglo gamblers. According to the schedule I have, some €3.5 billion is to be paid to them over the next seven or eight months. A total of €21.5 billion is to be paid to all the other holders of unsecured and unguaranteed bonds, for which the Irish people have no responsibility. The Taoiseach needs to deal with that issue, rather than using figures to show that disastrously high interest rates, which should never have been imposed by our so-called partners, are being brought down. The incredible explanation given by the Minister and the ECB was that what he had said about burning the bondholders - those are my words, but that was the idea - was not the way forward if we were to try to encourage the markets. When the Taoiseach refers to "contagion", he means that the sharks in the market would go to Italy and Spain and raise their interest rates. The Government and the ECB are running in front of these unelected and unaccounted players in the financial markets. They are sacrificing the livelihoods, jobs and welfare of our people. I ask the Taoiseach to have some bottle. There is no responsibility on an Irish Government to repay these tens of billions of euro. He should stop it now. The money should be invested in public infrastructure and used to create the tens of thousands of jobs needed by our people.

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