Results 4,221-4,240 of 36,118 for speaker:Pearse Doherty
- Promissory Notes: Statements (7 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: It is simply more spin from the Government. It might bring benefits in terms of the general Government balance, but it has not removed the burden of the placement of the Anglo Irish Bank on the shoulders of taxpayers, which was wrong. It has increased it. This was the time - the golden hour - to secure a deal, to say to the ECB that we are not in a position to pay back this debt.
- Promissory Notes: Statements (7 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: Let us look at our unemployment rates, the 430,000 people who are unemployed – 60% of whom are long-term unemployed. Let us look at the 87,000 who emigrated last year and the similar number who are planning to emigrate next year. Let us look at the one in four people who are in mortgage distress, who have either interest-only repayments or are in mortgage arrears. Look at the...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: Sometimes the Minister, Deputy Noonan, has the potential to make me laugh. The analogy he drew to Sinn Féin's negotiations in the Good Friday Agreement was one of those moments. However, unlike the Minister, we went into those talks with a view to trying to bring us closer to a united Ireland. As the Minister knows, we were successful, despite the fact that the Irish Government at the...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: -----we got the British Government, for the first time ever, to set aside an illegal international agreement, the pathway to creating a united Ireland. In terms of what the Minister achieved, he did not betray his principles in these talks because he did not have the principle of asking for a debt write-down in the talks. His argument was to ask what was the point in asking for something or...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: It was the Irish people who gave up the claim, a claim that was never enforced when people were being burnt out of their houses through successive governments in which the Minister and Fianna Fáil were involved. That said, for the first time ever there is a legal pathway for a united Ireland to exist. The British Government is committed to bringing about a united Ireland if the people...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: The question needs to be asked as to what step forward the Minister has made here. If the principle was that this debt should not be placed on the shoulders of the Irish people, how has this agreement brought us forward one iota? The reality is that last Wednesday this House, in an echo of Fianna Fáil's most disastrous spell, rushed through far-reaching banking legislation that will...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: My colleagues will table an amendment to the motion tomorrow. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the promissory note arrangements in this House. I reiterate that when the first promissory note was paid in 2011, Sinn Féin was the only voice to raise it as an issue. The first time the promissory note was debated-----
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: With respect, Minister, you are around here for long enough-----
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: This kind of boyish craic of shouting across-----
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: Exactly. Talk to your own guy over here.
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: Honest to God, you are like two little schoolboys. I am making my contribution. I have just 20 minutes.
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: Do you want me to give you a facility to deal with the Ministers, put them in their place and tell them to stop heckling?
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: We are having a week-long debate on this issue. As I was saying before I was interrupted by the two lads, Sinn Féin had the first debate in this House on the promissory notes. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the matter again. Many serious issues arise from the passing of last week's legislation. It should have been properly debated. I will speak later about the fate of the IBRC...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: We do not believe the State should pay a single cent of this debt. It should not be paid in capital and it should not be paid in interest. That is a legitimate and logical position to have. There is no doubt it was a realistic position before the Government decided to cave in last week. I say that because I believe the Government's starting point should have been to look for and secure a...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: It is a continuation of Fianna Fáil's approach to the banking crisis, which was to nationalise private debt and thereby place the burden on the shoulders of Irish taxpayers.
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: It was unfair when Fianna Fáil asked Irish taxpayers to take on this burden and it is equally unfair now that Fine Gael the Labour Party are asking us to issue sovereign bonds to pay off every last cent of the banking debt of Irish Nationwide and IBRC.
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: That is the long and the short of it. I have studied the technical details on the Department's website. We need much more detail. I hope it is forthcoming. When one examines the core issue, one has to ask whether we have actually made progress on the initiative that was secured at the Eurogroup meeting on 29 June 2012. The initiative in question was forced upon European leaders as a...
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: It first decided to say, in regard to the part relating to IBRC, "We will not look at it in the context of banking debt and we are only going to look at the issue of the pillar debts-----"
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: If the Minister, Deputy Noonan, is willing to use Government time for three or four days to debate the concept of a united Ireland and what we should all be doing in this House to achieve that, I and my party would be only too willing. However, we are dealing with these issues-----
- Promissory Notes: Motion (12 Feb 2013)
Pearse Doherty: The Ministers might not like hearing it but it is democracy, I have a mandate and I am entitled to speak. They are two of most senior Ministers in Cabinet, after all. What Eamon Gilmore told us after 29 June was-----