Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Deputy Ross should understand the Government and I do not seek any congratulations. As he is well aware, once the Bill was published, the referendum issue became the people's property and it was, therefore, the people's decision. It is the Irish people who the Deputy would be right to congratulate on the clarity and decisiveness of their decision. The Deputy put together a Private Members' Bill which was unconstitutional in the sense that it sought to defer a decision which had become the property of the people. The Bill could not apply because had it been followed through, it would have meant that it may not have been able to hold any future referendum.

I assure Deputy Ross that the issue of the bank crisis will be on the agenda. I assume it will be a central issue for the June meeting and it may become necessary to have some serious reflection on it before the end of June. I do not know when the report on the assessment of the Spanish banks' liability will become fully known but it is an issue about which I spoke to Prime Minister Rajoy. As the Deputy is aware, a deep and intensive analysis of the scale of that liability is taking place as we speak. It does not follow automatically that a decision to extend a particular facility to a country would apply across the board. However, there is certainly a strong case for political justice to be seen to be done in respect of facilities being given to one country or another. The Irish case is very well known to all of the leaders to whom I spoke, to the extent that I made it perfectly clear that the Irish people's view is that a deal on the bank crisis would have very beneficial effects for this country, both in terms of our capacity to meet our debt liabilities and our ability to become the first eurozone country to emerge from a programme, which would also be in Europe's interest. These issues all form part of the discussions.

While Ireland is not the biggest country or most powerful economy, Irish people have taken many difficult decisions and have had to put up with the consequences of these decisions in the country's longer-term interest of emerging from the programme. I assure Deputy Ross that, from a political perspective, the Government will not waste any opportunity to make the case, not only from our national perspective but also as a member of the eurozone, that politicians - political leaders - now need to make political decisions on the strategy for the road ahead. I temper that by stating we will not have a quick fix decision which will apply in this case because, as I indicated to Deputies Martin and Adams, all of these matters involve tortuous and complex discussions from legal, constitutional and financial perspectives across 17 different parliaments and with one bank involved. The issue is central to the agenda and will be central to the June meeting.

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