Taoiseach, with respect, you might be best served by listening to what the mannerly deputy is saying, rather than resorting to sarcasm. This is not a personal issue, this is a national issue.
The deputy is referring to the totally unsustainable burden of debt now standing at 123% of GDP a figure that is itself bloated by approx. 30% because of transfer payments and other tax saving strategies adopted by the multi national sector. The tactics of burden sharing adopted by this government and it's predecessor have been utterly unsuccessful. We were advised by none other than Hans Werner Sinn back in February not to pay the promissory notes and definitely not to convert them to sovereign debt.
Nothing illustrates the instability of our debt more, than the fact, that we have borrowings of 24bn built up in the national system on which we are currently paying 2 million euro's a month in interest charges. This is a 48 million euro premium, because we are unable to borrowing in a timely fashion and have had to stockpile debt instead.
This is almost two and half times the figure Taoiseach, that the government was touting as annual "savings" if the country endorsed the proposition to abolish the Seanad. Deputy Mathews is still the most prescient analyst in the Dail. I find the antipathy towards him to be a sign of government weakness.
Robert Browne
Posted on 10 Oct 2013 7:00 pm
Taoiseach, with respect, you might be best served by listening to what the mannerly deputy is saying, rather than resorting to sarcasm. This is not a personal issue, this is a national issue.
The deputy is referring to the totally unsustainable burden of debt now standing at 123% of GDP a figure that is itself bloated by approx. 30% because of transfer payments and other tax saving strategies adopted by the multi national sector. The tactics of burden sharing adopted by this government and it's predecessor have been utterly unsuccessful. We were advised by none other than Hans Werner Sinn back in February not to pay the promissory notes and definitely not to convert them to sovereign debt.
Nothing illustrates the instability of our debt more, than the fact, that we have borrowings of 24bn built up in the national system on which we are currently paying 2 million euro's a month in interest charges. This is a 48 million euro premium, because we are unable to borrowing in a timely fashion and have had to stockpile debt instead.
This is almost two and half times the figure Taoiseach, that the government was touting as annual "savings" if the country endorsed the proposition to abolish the Seanad. Deputy Mathews is still the most prescient analyst in the Dail. I find the antipathy towards him to be a sign of government weakness.