Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the Government's A Strategy for Growth document in which I found only two sentences relating to the issue of the retrospective recapitalisation of banks. The document is 66 pages long but there are only two sentences on page 26 relating to this crucial issue, which read as follows:

...the Eurogroup has agreed that retroactive recapitalisation may be agreed on a case-by-case basis as part of the European Stability Mechanism's Direct Bank Recapitalisation instrument (DBR). Significant work remains to be done on the details of this instrument.

We can only come to the conclusion from this that the Government has thrown in the towel and accepted that retroactive recapitalisation is not going to happen. The Taoiseach and his Government are accepting the situation where 40% of the cost of bailing out the EU banking system is being borne by this State, with only 1% of the population of the EU. Is the Taoiseach accepting the situation where each and every person in this State is saddled with €9,000 of bank debt as against an average of €200 per person in the rest of the EU? Does he think this is fair? I certainly do not think it is. This country has an unsustainable level of debt, amounting to €200 billion or almost 125% of our GDP. We are in a very precarious situation and are dependent on the international bond markets to be able to borrow at affordable interest rates. Ireland needs a growth rate of 4%, sustained over the next decade, to make this level of debt sustainable. Given the commitment of this Government to tight fiscal policies, we would need a very favourable international economic climate to achieve that level of growth. There is no guarantee of this happening. What could and would make our debt sustainable is a debt write down on the €64 billion bank bailout. Does the Taoiseach agree that retrospective recapitalisation through the ESM would achieve that? This should be a key priority for the Government and not a footnote in its medium-term economic strategy.

Some Deputies in this House have not thrown in the towel. I instructed my legal team this morning to submit an appeal to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the recent High Court decision on the promissory note and the Credit Institutions (Financial Support) Act of 2008.

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