Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government is working its way through that crisis and improving it. The deficit must be reduced and the Government has been doing that. It stated it would renegotiate the terms of the bailout and has done so in several respects. It got a reduction in the interest rate and an improvement on the terms recently at the eurozone and ECOFIN meeting. Moreover, today's agreement constitutes a significant advance and must be acknowledged as such. I do not wish to claim it will immediately end the crisis because of course it will not. However, it is a significant advance. It is a significant change in the terms of the commitments that Irish taxpayers have been obliged to make in respect of what is being paid over to Anglo. One should not underestimate the significance of what the Government has done here over the past 24 hours.

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