Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

As the six questions I had tabled cover three different aspects of the visit, I will ask about each of them. In recent weeks and months, President Obama has been strident and often damning of the failure of European leaders to deal with the deepening crisis in the eurozone. He has called consistently for more decisive and more concrete action to deal with the financial crisis in Europe. He stated recently:

If you are engaging in austerity too quickly, it makes it harder to pay off your debts. Markets respond ... if you are contracting, they bet you're not going to be able to pay off your debts.

He then added that after a bank bailout, a proper plan for growth is needed. I could not have put it better myself. This comment sums up months of criticism by President Obama of eurozone leaders and their failure to deal with this crisis, as it continues to worsen. Moreover, President Obama's words are borne out by what has now happened in Spain on foot of the move to recapitalise that country's banks in the face of the ECB's insistence, as was the case in this country, that ordinary people should guarantee the bailout of the banks. The result of this has been to plunge Spain now, just as was the case with Ireland previously, further into a debt spiral. It is not time the Taoiseach heeded President Obama's words? When the Taoiseach spoke to President Obama, did he make these views known to the Taoiseach? Did he make known his understanding, as he has stated in public, that the approach being taken by eurozone leaders was a failure and was not working but that a different strategy, which moved in the opposite direction to austerity, was needed? How did the Taoiseach respond to that? How does he respond to President Obama's critique of euro leaders in the context of the unravelling of the current bailout of the Spanish banks, just as, of course, the so-called bailout of this country has unravelled and failed to deliver on its promise?

In addition, I refer to the Taoiseach's engagement in the New York Stock Exchange. Serious concerns have been raised over the presence of Mr. Denis O'Brien on the same platform as the Taoiseach, given that Mr. O'Brien is someone against whom very serious findings were made in the Moriarty tribunal and about the circumstances in which he was awarded the second mobile telephone licence and the assistance that was given to him in that regard by a former Fine Gael Minister, to whom he also was known to have given payments. Moreover, I note Mr. O'Brien, a billionaire, is now a tax exile from this country.

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