Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I will tell the Senator privately.

NewERA is another example of new thinking, and I hope it works. The concept is simple. There is money in the pension fund. There is money that we hope we will be allowed use from the sale of State assets. We do not have a bob to put into any kind of stimulus package in the economy to develop new infrastructure, and we are trying to fund it in a different way. We are using the resources of the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, and of the pension fund, which is skilled in measuring investment to determine if we can develop new initiatives, and it will be geared towards modern infrastructure. It is the beginning of an initiative and I hope it runs fairly well.

A number of Senators asked about strategic investment, and the Senator asked about micro-finance. The people now in NewERA tell me they will have proposals for a strategic investment fund very shortly which they will forward to the Department. I hope that involves elements of micro-financing as well.

Senator O'Brien also referred to the position in Europe and alleged that no decisions were taken in Luxembourg. Many decisions were taken in Luxembourg and the Senator will see the decisions emerging as the weeks go by. It is clear already that there is now a commitment to recapitalise the European banks which are impaired. That is an important decision. To my mind the wrong question has been asked. The big question in recent weeks is what Europe will do about Greece. That is the wrong question. The question is what Europe should do about the eurozone and if that question is answered, Greece falls into context. In terms of what Europe should do about the eurozone, it should recapitalise the impaired banks, build a financial firewall against contagion because we saw what happened when the contagion spread from Greece to Italy and Spain, and then in parallel it should sort out the Greek situation. It should then move on to the governance issues, as Senator Barrett stated, so that there is a system in Europe to ensure all of this does not happen again and that we do not have a recurring tragedy every four or five years.