Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is a bittersweet moment for the Irish people. At the start of the crisis, we had very low national debt, very high employment, very low emigration and no negative equity or mortgage crisis. Five years later, we have heartbreaking unemployment, particularly for young people. An entire generation has been financially destroyed. We have very high emigration - the highest level ever - that is continuing to rise this year. The losses of professional investors around the world have been shouldered by the Irish people. Billions of euro of Irish people's money has been paid out in windfall profits to speculative investors over the past number of years. Unfortunately, we are the toast of financial centres all over the world because we have made an awful lot of speculative investors very wealthy over the past number of years.

Today is a bittersweet moment. I am glad the troika is gone. I think we are all glad the troika is gone, particularly the ECB and the European Commission because it is those two institutions that led the charge on the Irish people picking up the tab for international financial losses. It turns out that the IMF actually spoke in our favour over time. I am glad the troika is gone and that it will not be telling us how to run our country according to an outdated economic outlook.

I support the Taoiseach's decision not to avail of a precautionary credit line. As the Tánaiste said, there is about €30 billion in the bank. I believe we must roll over about €7 billion in national debt and, of course, we will have a deficit somewhere between €8 billion and €9 billion. It looks like we have about twice the cash that we would conceivably need for next year. I think the Taoiseach has made the right decision. The next thing he must do is get retrospective recapitalisation from the ESM because we cannot continue to ask the Irish people and children not yet born to continue to pay for the mistakes made by the financial sector over the past number of years. I know there is a lot of effort going into this but it must be achieved.

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