Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The sheer length of the Minister's reply and the level of detail provided tell a story. On leaving the programme, Ireland will be subject to just as rigorous a regime of budgetary surveillance, monitoring and debt and deficit reduction as it endured under the programme. Behind all the jargon, technocratic language and interesting names for the various programmes lies the fact that we will have to pay off €100 billion of debt at a rate of 5% per annum after we exit the programme. The Minister should spell that out in clear language. He indicated there will be a lead-in time of three years. However, during that lead-in period, we must move towards a position of paying off one twentieth of €100 billion or €5 billion per annum. The growth the Minister had hoped would rescue us from this scenario has not materialised as all the Department's forecasts have been wrong. Does this not mean that we are faced with a decade of further austerity, even after our so-called exit from the programme?

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