Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was sticking out a mile. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, said many months ago that a deal would be achieved. It had to be because we could not pay and we probably were unwilling to pay. It was not realistic for us to pay the promissory notes over a ten-year period. The ECB and the European powers realised that and in effect this was pragmatism. The problem was that we did not ask for the one thing that Deputy Pringle referred to, the write-off. Once the Government accepted the fact that this debt would be paid in full it was over. The game was over. It was only a matter of tinkering around with the rates and the maturity dates, and that is exactly what happened.

Let us look at the bars that the Government has set itself elsewhere that it has not achieved at all. Growth, which was initially predicted to be 2.2% in 2013, is down to 1% and falling, while the number of jobs, which was expected to remain even, went down 1.8% last year. What other targets has the Government set itself on particularly pertinent financial matters? Was it listening to Patrick Honohan this morning talking about mortgage relief and mortgage debt? He was sending out the strongest possible warning to everybody in this House that the Government and the banks, which are joined at the hip, were not fulfilling the obligation on them to tackle this problem and that they are burying their heads in the sand.

See this speech in context