Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In recent times President Barroso of the European Commission thought out loud and said in his view that austerity had reached its limits. Prior to that a former employee of the IMF, Ashoka Mody, said that reliance on austerity is counterproductive. Did the Taoiseach discuss any of those matters with Ms Lagarde or did he draw her attention to the huge dilemma we face within the domestic economy? Did he discuss with her growth-focused initiatives and policies that would be most suited to this country? Did the Taoiseach tease out with Ms Lagarde that people are now saying that the view within officialdom is that austerity has either run its course or is in some cases deepening problems? He knows as well as I do that as long as domestic demand and confidence are on the floor, we have a big problem in the domestic economy and, by extension, in respect of employment and unemployment rates. Did the Taoiseach explore any of those issues with Ms Lagarde?

The previous time the Taoiseach referred to discussions in Davos with people about the opening up of telecommunications was in the context of the G8 summit. I remind him that he said:

When speaking to people in Davos, the issue of the opening up of Myanmar, the former Burma, arose. It is a country of which we do not have great knowledge, although there were real connections between Ireland and Burma as it was called. That country of 60 million has a huge range of natural resources, yet some 58 million of its people have never had access to communications. That country will move from what might be termed ground zero to cloud computing and cloud access straight away. The scale of the investment there will be enormous.

That is what the Taoiseach said on 12 February. He clearly recognised a big investment opportunity in that regard. Will he elaborate a little more on whom he discussed those matters with in Davos? He said it was a member of an international company. Does he recall who it was or who they were? I ask that because I understand that Digicel, the company controlled by Denis O'Brien, is pursuing one of the two telephone licences currently on offer in Myanmar. Did that form part of the discussion?

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