Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am very pleased the issue is on the agenda and this is to be commended. If I understand the Taoiseach properly, he stated the leaders of the European Union have signed up to deal with the banking debt including our legacy debt. If this is his interpretation of it, what we need is delivery of the agreement. In his reply the Taoiseach spoke about the implications of this, which is a slightly different issue to the clarity with which he described this as being about dealing with Irish legacy debt. I wish the Taoiseach well in all of this, do not get me wrong. I am sure the Taoiseach wants to see the IMF out of here. We all do. We are in agreement on different points of our objectives. It is how we achieve it and go about it which are the big issues.

The Taoiseach has been contradicted, and his interpretation of the agreement has been contradicted by others, and it looks like the summit will be a fairly fractious affair. There is talk about there being no agreement between the Greek government and the EU and IMF on cuts in that state. Finland is expressing grave concern about new budget proposals. I do not have the time to go through all of the issues which are features of the media coverage. Here is the rub. Between them, the present and previous Governments borrowed €67 billion and gave €64 billion to the banks, including to one bank which is closed and is subject to criminal proceedings.

The people of the State are carrying the burden of that. In his answer, the Taoiseach did not explain what the Government's strategy is for crunching. He said the agreement has already been made so we do not have to remake it. It is a matter of implementing that agreement. Could he, and I ask this fraternally, explain how he intends to do that?

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