Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My apologies, the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach tells the Irish public that he has removed the need to borrow a massive €20 billion over the next ten years. We also hear that the deal will give us an extra €0.5 billion in options when it comes to next year's budget although we now hear it is €1 billion. The Government keeps changing its mind on this. Even if this was true, the savings would only be relative to the resolution that the last Fianna Fáil-Green Administration put in place. Measured against any other reasonable barometer, this deal can only be described as lacking in ambition and a kick in the teeth for future generations of Irish people - if there are any of us left given the amount of people leaving the country at the moment.

We were told as late as last June that there would be burden sharing, the creation of the ESM would solve all our problems and retrospective deals on legacy banking debt were as good as done. Both leaders of the coalition hailed it as a seismic shift and the media lapped it up. We understand now why that is important. It is all about perception. Fast-forward eight months' later and we have no burden sharing and no write-down of the debt forced on us to save the European banking system. This Government's lack of ambition is laid bare in its admission that it did not even ask for a write-down. Our capitulation is made worse when we hear a senior Government Minister say that the reason it did not ask was because he would be told to "go away" by the ECB if he did. If one treated a dog that way, one would get into trouble. Why would the Minister accept it? Whatever happened to burden sharing? There is none. We are now on the hook for a banking debt which we did not take out. To make matters worse, we as a nation will bail out European banks in the future through the ESM if any of our fellow European banking systems implode. When our system went bust, we paid and if others go bust, we also pay.

Obviously, the question is what was the alternative. This was not to pay the promissory note, as advised by people like Professor Brian Lucey; Deputy Mathews, the best Deputy on the Government side, and economist Paul Somerville. The simple fact is that the Government did not even try to do this. We were told it would be illegal. There is no evidence of this and we have a Government Deputy in the House who said it was not illegal. If it was, what about the bailout of the European banking system, which was illegal according to Christine Lagarde? Now we will never know whether this could have been achieved because the Government never asked in the first place. It is like the young lad in his teenage years at the disco who never asked that beautiful girl across the hall to dance. The Government will never find out whether it would have been possible and will live in mediocrity forever.

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