Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last week, before the European Council meeting, I asked the Taoiseach, on behalf of the Irish people, to try his hardest to ensure he got a deal which would solve our unsustainable debt crisis. A week later, the summit has come and gone but no deal has been made to solve the crisis facing people across Europe. At last week’s summit, behind all the spin, doublespeak, mixed messages, confusion and German mood changes, the fact remains the Taoiseach and his negotiators failed to deliver a deal for Ireland on debt as well as the overriding political necessity of separating sovereign and private debt. Many commentators have suggested the Taoiseach did not even succeed in getting it on the agenda for negotiation.

An information gap now exists following that meeting. Uncertainty will undermine confidence and lead directly to an increase in the cost of borrowing. Will the Taoiseach accept there is more uncertainty following the summit than prior to it? Time is not on our side. We have a debt timebomb ticking away. More than €6 billion is due to be paid on a promissory note next March - €3.1 billion to Anglo and €3.1 billion to Bank of Ireland for the one-year bond used to cover a 2012 promissory note payment. Would the Taoiseach describe the summit’s outcome, including the mixed messages, as adding to any certainty or confidence in the markets which we are proposing to go back to in 2014?

All we seem to have learned since the actual summit is that the German and French Governments have agreed that Ireland is a special case. What does that mean?

See this speech in context