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

This House, every Deputy in it and the public at home deserve to know what is going on. We are looking at live blogs on RTE, following Bloomberg and Reuters, getting leaks from the ECB and the Department of Finance. We are told that bonds will be issued over a 27 year maturity. We are told that assets will go to NAMA. We are told that powers will be devolved here and there. We are told that the ECB was supposed to agree this deal at dinner time. The Minister still has not stood up and said what this means. Will this mean an easier budget for the people of this State next year? We asked the troika last week if we were to receive a deal on our banking debt and if the promissory note was not to be paid out, whether that would mean a reduction in the adjustment that had to be made. The troika indicated that it would reclassify it and look on it as a windfall and that any savings that could be made would be used to write down debt. I hope that is not the case but that is what the troika led the Sinn Féin delegation to believe.

There is an onus on the Minister to spell out to people who have suffered for far too long through his policies of austerity what this legislation means. He must tell them in black and white terms whether he expects them, their children and their children's children to pay off the debts of Anglo Irish Bank and the IBRC or whether he is going to stand up for Irish interests and call on the ECB to allow a write-down of this debt. This legislation is a precursor to having future generations of children pay a debt that is not theirs. It is for those reasons that Sinn Féin will not be in a position to support this legislation.

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