Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

On the role of the Economic Management Council, I would like to refer to the phone calls that were made in 2011 to the Taoiseach and allegedly to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, from the then president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, who demanded absolutely that the Government would not burn some bondholders it was apparently about to burn. The Taoiseach capitulated without a Cabinet meeting to Mr. Trichet's threat that a financial bomb would go off in Dublin rather than in Frankfurt. Was it not the Economic Management Council that met in relation to that threat? Did the Minister for Finance not come in and change Government policy on his feet without reference to the Cabinet? What else is that, if not a dictatorship inside the Government?

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