Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It seems to me that it does not matter what I or the Taoiseach say or what outcome we achieve. No matter what it is, Sinn Féin will come into the House and play it for cheap party political advantage and cheap party political point scoring. This issue is far too serious for that. The Irish people and the Irish taxpayers have been saddled with a huge bank debt. It was a mistake to tie the bank debt to the State. What we have to do now is negotiate our way out of that. We have a clear objective which is to minimise that burden on the Irish taxpayer.

We are engaged in those negotiations. This is not something new. We have been working on this for quite some time. We are very clear that our objective is to minimise the burden on the Irish taxpayer and we are going to continue with that. We are determined to get a result on that.

The wise decision the Irish people made last Thursday against Sinn Féin's unwise advice to them-----

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