Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Following what Deputy McDonald said, I applaud the Tánaiste's passion for equality and non-discrimination, which is obviously very real. However it is a bit hard to take when tomorrow the Government will vote through a piece of legislation that discriminates on no grounds other than age. Perhaps that is something to reflect upon.

I wish to ask the Tánaiste about the European Stability Mechanism. EU leaders are meeting today and tomorrow in Brussels. It is clear that one of the issues to be discussed is the retrospective recapitalisation of banks using the European Stability Mechanism. This is critical for Ireland. As everyone in this House knows, we have poured about €64 billion into the failed banking system in Ireland. The latest information from the budgetary documents suggests that next year we will pay about €2.7 billion in interest on the money we all poured into the banks. Let us put that in perspective. The entire gain to the Exchequer of all the measures from the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill - including cuts to those under 26 - will be about €100 million. Let us think about this for a second. The Social Welfare and Pensions Bill will return to the Exchequer about 1/27th of the money that we will pay in interest - not on the national debt, but just the bit of the national debt that is there because of the banking crisis. The youth who will be discriminated against in tomorrow's legislation will pay that €2.7 billion in their taxes for the rest of their lives, unless Ireland can get a substantial deal on recapitalisation of the Irish banks.

I welcome the fact that the Taoiseach has written to his EU counterparts to keep this imperative at centre stage. Labour and Fine Gael made a lot of noise before the election about senior bondholders sharing the burden.

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