Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In his reply, the Minister focused on the debt, debt sustainability and the interest on debt of €1 billion out of the total of €8 billion in reference to the banks. I remind the Minister that he dismissed as kindergarten economics "The real effects of debt", a paper by Cecchetti, Mohanty and Zampolli, back in September 2011. However, he should have concentrated on that because it discussed what Martin Wolf spoke about in his article in the Financial Timesand The Irish Timeslast week. He said that the bigger countries of the eurozone, where debt is a big proportion of GDP, household debt and non-financial corporate debt have caused a flattening or contraction of the growth of the economies of Europe. If the Minister had listened in 2011, instead of dismissing the paper as kindergarten economics, we might have had a better case back then for getting the write-down of the debt losses of the banking system.

I plead with the Minister to be courageous and brave. He is the one of the longest serving Ministers of the eurozone and I plead with him to use that experience and authority to get the case argued, advocated and across the line for this country. Please do this.

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