Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is a matter of monetary policy, and while I have much control over fiscal policy through the budget, monetary policy is for the ECB and the national central banks. Monetary policy is for the new banking union, driven by the people in Frankfurt. I advocated QE when it was very unpopular to do so in Europe. I campaigned for it for approximately three years and, eventually, a majority moved on side making it possible for Mr. Draghi and the people in Frankfurt to move, without objections in the German constitutional courts, to implement QE.

QE seems to be working. Europe is slowly rising and across all countries, including Greece, there is positive growth, which many people attribute to QE. The commitment is that it will continue until 2017, when it will be reviewed to see if it will be continued. I cannot see it as a permanent feature of monetary policy. It will end at some stage. The most serious internal risk to our prosperity is the size of our debt, and we must keep pushing it down. The risk arises not from the debt itself but the interest on the debt. If QE is removed and interest rates increase, it will have an adverse impact. We need to be better positioned on the overall burden of debt by 2017, which we will be.

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