John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, the aims of which I support. Without repeating what previous speakers have said, I appreciate the difficulties and hardships that have been inflicted on people in Greece in recent years. They certainly do not deserve to be preyed on or spoken about in the House in the manner in which they have. People in Greece are suffering. This legislation is an attempt to provide a longer term solution to the difficulties in Greece. A number of important dates will emerge in the next few days with regard to what is proposed in the legislation. I understand tomorrow is the last day for signing up for private sector involvement, which is a crucial aspect of the legislation. Tomorrow, 8 March, is the last day to sign up for the Greek bond swap offer. This legislation is noteworthy in that it is very different from many of the discussions we have had on this issue previously. That private sector involvement is included is a significant new departure.

I commend the Minister, Deputy Noonan, for his ongoing negotiations on the promissory notes issue and wish him the best in that respect. To listen to several members of Fianna Fáil - essentially all the speakers prior to the previous one - talk about the urgent need to renegotiate the promissory notes and that action must be taken now, when that party so recently landed the country with the promissory notes as they currently exist, is the height of hypocrisy. The Minister spoke about the importance of this renegotiation long before it became popular in the mainstream media and I wish him well in that regard. I echo some of the sentiments expressed earlier about the possibility that it would include not only interest rates and the terms but the capital amount and the possibility that some negotiated settlement can be reached in that regard. I am not sure if that is feasible but it is that towards which we should negotiate.

I listened in almost disbelief to the previous Fianna Fáil speaker speak of the necessity for an agreement across Europe for a write-down of all of the banking debt. These are the people who made a political decision to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank, which effectively was the bank of their friends and cronies, and landed a significant amount of debt onto the shoulders of the Irish people. I cannot let that comment be made by that Member in this House without challenging the hypocrisy of it. I do not know if Deputy Fleming was using the royal "we" when he spoke about the debts we ran up and how we ran them up on the basis of paying doctors and nurses. His party ran them up on the basis of winning elections and buying people's votes and perhaps that is what he was trying to get at in the point he was making.

It is worth pointing out that in respect of the difficult decisions the Minister has had to take since he assumed office, we have heard as recently as last week the ESRI state that the Government is on target for its budget deficit targets for the end of the year. Last year it exceeded those targets and that has a real impact on people's lives. Often politicians and members of Government lecture households and businesses on the need to balance their books and that is why I particularly support the stability treaty. Twice in my lifetime, once when I was very young in the late 1970s and now in more recent times, the Fianna Fáil Party has broke the country by ramping up public expenditure on the back of election promises and gimmicks. The stability treaty is to be supported because it will not allow it, in whatever incarnation it takes in the future, to do that ever again. For that reason the treaty is to be welcomed. I fully support the Minister and his officials in the difficult task of trying to negotiate a better deal than the deal Fianna Fáil left for them as they go about their business in the European Union.

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