Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

When it was formed, the Government set out to negotiate a better deal for Ireland, to negotiate better terms for the bailout arrangements that had been made by the previous Government and better terms on the EU-IMF deal. Part of those negotiations was to negotiate an arrangement but we considered that the promissory note arrangement which was entered into by the previous Government, was a very expensive way of dealing with the bank bailout. We set about negotiating an alternative way of doing it. As the Minister for Finance has made clear to the House, that approach is based on settling the promissory note issue by way of a long-term Government bond. The discussions on the detail in this regard are continuing. The Governor of the Central Bank yesterday told the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform that those negotiations are going well and he expressed optimism about their outcome. While those negotiations are underway I do not think it is useful to get into the detail of what may or may not emerge from them. The negotiations are going well and the Governor of the Central Bank-----

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