Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There has been a great deal of talk about the deal and the Minister's comments today are welcome. The Minister of State, Deputy Lucinda Creighton, and the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, probably said more than the Minister, Deputy Noonan, would have wished. The comments from the Taoiseach and those made yesterday by the Governor of the Central Bank all indicate that a deal is very likely.

Given that, the real question is what is a deal. Last year, the Minister, Deputy Noonan, announced a deal that was a five-hand trick with the IBRC, the State, NAMA, Bank of Ireland and back again to IBRC, in which the ECB got its money and we ended up worse off in terms of our budgetary position. We paid the capital but there is still liability and our debt did not decrease.

The real question the people to whom I speak want to have answered is what impact it will have on them. According to the Governor, something is being engineered by the Central Bank. It has not been signed off on, as he has not got complete agreement on it. Will the Minister provide clarity for the House and the public at home on the proposal before the ECB? Will it lead to a reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio and the liability on taxpayers to pay back €28.1 billion to the IBRC, which is what the promissory note is worth at this point in time? Will there be a reduction in the amount of capital? Will we end up paying more or less in interest as a result this year?

When I put these questions to the Governor, it appeared that the engineering of a deal would mean that our debt would not decrease, that we would end up paying back all of the capital and that the amount in interest we would pay this year would increase rather than decrease. That was the sense I took from him and I stand to be corrected. I, therefore, seek clarification from the Minister on where the issue lies. I understand there will be benefits in the medium term in terms of profiling and also that there could be significant benefits in the budgetary position next year. However, when Fine Gael spoke about burden sharing, most believed it would be between the bankers and the bond holders; we did not think it would be between one generation and the next. It is clear that the deal being orchestrated involves passing the burden from this generation to the next, but that is not the burden sharing most people want to see.

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