Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We must understand where we all are, not just in this country but across the whole of Europe and indeed in Northern Ireland where there are reductions. People are struggling, salaries have been reduced, people have lost their jobs in many cases and businesses have had to let people go in order to survive. While we have been able to ring-fence a certain aspect of the education budget by virtue of the growing population, I have not and nobody else would have been able to isolate or ring-fence in its entirety an entire budget. They might be able to suggest it in Opposition but if they had to implement it, it would be a different case because other pressures would arise.

At the moment, this country and republic can only borrow money on terms and conditions we can afford from one source. That is what the loss of economic sovereignty means. Hopefully, we will be out of this situation by the end of this calendar year. We will still have to borrow money but we will not be subject to the diktats of the troika as we currently are. The troika has said that we must get our budget deficit down in a series of steps to just under 3% of GDP in two years.

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