Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This evening, Dáil Éireann will debate a motion asking the Government to lobby the ECB and the European Commission to destroy the promissory note bonds of €28 billion. The Taoiseach does not normally speak on Private Members' business, so I wanted to take this opportunity to gather his thoughts. In February, the €28 billion IOU from the Irish people to Anglo Irish Bank was converted into a €28 billion IOU from the Irish people to the Cental Bank of Ireland. This reduced the borrowing costs, which is to be welcomed, but we should be absolutely clear that the Irish people still owe that €28 billion.

We raised this directly with the troika recently and asked what would happen if the Irish State simply refused to pay the Central Bank of Ireland this money. The troika said it was against the rules of monetary financing, which it is. That is reasonable because in normal circumstances central banks cannot print money and hand it to governments for free. As the Taoiseach well knows, however, these are not normal circumstances. That is because the ECB, at best, facilitated and, in my opinion, coerced both this Government and the previous one into paying tens of billions of euro in public money to the creditors of private banks.

Essentially, this €28 billion is a debt incurred by the Irish people to ensure that private creditors of former Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society do not have to incur any losses as a result of their bad investment decisions.

The ECB had no problem changing the rules when it came to protecting the banks. In socialising private sector losses the ECB essentially tore up the rule book on Europe's market-based economy. When it comes to a workable solution to removing those losses from the shoulders of the people, the ECB hides behind that rule book.

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