Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy Noonan, spoke on "Morning Ireland" today and told us the Trichet letter was released today because the banking inquiry was up and running. That is not true. No motion has been put before the Dáil and will not be for weeks. The cynical timing is about one thing, namely, knocking Irish Water off the headlines and out of the front pages of the newspapers.

There is a relationship between both. It seems as though the ECB wants it every way. It flooded the European banks with cash, then when things went belly-up it broke its own rules and allowed this country to write IOUs for Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide. The Trichet letter clearly shows that the ECB bullied this country into a bailout on its own terms. Some €30.6 billion was pumped into two non-solvent banks, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide. The loan losses were then converted into sovereign debt by this Government, leaving us with a €25 billion debt to pay before interest is added. This money does not need to be repaid to bondholders, banks and pension funds. Essentially, Patrick Honohan has told us this needs to be extinguished and taken out of circulation.

This year €500 million will be taken out of circulation, a sum of money which would fix a lot of leaky pipes. The same amount will have to be paid every year until 2018, then €1,000 million will be paid every year until 2023 and then €2,000 million until it is all gone. Meanwhile, the Irish people are left carrying the burden, which manifests itself in the universal social charge, reduced public services and Irish Water.

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