Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

The agreement reached at Council level was significant and could have significant benefits to this State and to our citizens. The Minister was at the finance committee last week when I wished him well in his attempts to separate the sovereign debt from the banking debt. I have listened to the conclusions of the summit and the devil is in the detail. I am afraid that he is not being ambitious enough on what the Government is going to seek. I listened to his ministerial colleagues speak at the weekend on what this could possibly mean. They said that the vicious circle has been broken between banking debt and sovereign debt and that we have won the principle of retrospection. The litmus test on that is Anglo Irish Bank and the €28 billion promissory note.

My understanding of separating banking debt and sovereign debt is that if Anglo Irish Bank was to emerge in Germany in two years, it would be the ESM that would fund that bank and it would be the ESM that would absorb the losses if such losses were incurred. If we are to work on the principle of retrospection, then regardless of the fact there is not any longer any value in Anglo Irish Bank, the same solutions that would be applied in other member states in the future must be applied to what happened in Anglo Irish Bank. While I know we cannot determine the outcomes, is that the Government's starting point at least? Is the Government putting up the full €30 billion and more that we have put into IBRC, and does it want that to be absorbed by the ESM and the losses absorbed across the euro system?

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