Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Two days after this Government was formed on 31 March 2011 the issue of the promissory notes arose for many people both inside and outside this House. Having listened to the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach in the lead up to that campaign, many people would have been under the impression that things would be different. This Government was elected on a mandate of change yet one of the first decisions it implemented at the time was to pay a €3 billion promissory note. That clearly set the agenda for this Government.

There were social consequences as a result of every decision the Government took since it came into office. We saw tonight one of those consequences in that people over the age of 70 who worked all their lives and contributed to economic growth for decades will now pay a price for decisions made by others. I am not an economist. Very few people in this Chamber are economists. I look at this in very simple terms. It is similar to me paying the debts accrued by someone who got into trouble as a result of gambling or spending money recklessly and that person walking away without paying any of the debts they accrued. Not only would I have bailed that person out, but I would have suffered the consequences of doing that. That is what has happened in this case. We are talking about people who gambled recklessly and spent money like there was no tomorrow. They traded, speculated, made a great of money and when the economy went bust they walked away with everything. A burden was then put on the Irish people to pay back that debt.

Some of the decisions taken since are difficult to fathom. We spent hours in an emergency session in this House debating the Anglo Irish Bank legislation. In effect what happened that night is that we took an odious bank debt, turned it into a sovereign debt and placed it not only on the shoulders of this generation and the next generation, but the generation after that. It was then spun by the Government as a good thing to do. There have been some short-term benefits from the deal secured on the promissory notes. No one is arguing that but if we look at the overall deal, the longer term consequences of that will be felt for many decades by generations to come. My children's children will end up paying a debt neither I nor any other Irish citizen accrued, with the exception of a few speculators and bondholders.

I listened carefully to the Minister of State when he said that to seek a write-down of this debt would be ludicrous and that it would damage our reputation in Europe. How does he know that? Nobody has even discussed the possibility of a write-down of that debt.

I refer to the €35 billion in respect of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society. That was put in place to save our partners in Europe, stabilise their banking system and the economic crisis sweeping across the European Union at the time. We should go to those very partners, about whom the Minister spoke highly, and tell them that there is an argument to be made for burden sharing. We are told that is not possible but nobody is going to the negotiating table and putting that possibility to them. Unless there is a change in policy, we will continue to pay an odious bank debt we did not have any responsibility in creating. That is a shame.

See this speech in context