David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

The Minister of State asked for responses and he said that no response had been made. We are talking about the ESM treaty, which in some respects is convoluted.

The other strategy would be to devise a different way to deal with the banks. The Government has said it wants to deal with the problem by means of promissory notes, yet what we are seeing is the most convoluted system I have ever seen. Essentially, the Irish Central Bank was allowed to print more than €30 billion to give to Anglo Irish Bank. That could be written off but the Germans do not want us to do that. They want us to give the money back. The first or second instalment of €3 billion that was to be paid back recently was taken from NAMA which was given a Government bond on the strength of that. NAMA gave the money to the Central Bank which burned the money and it was left with the bond. Bank of Ireland was to take over the bond and it had to get the agreement of its shareholders, which was provided. Bank of Ireland now has the bond and at some point we will pay it back and the same will happen for the next round. It is complicated and convoluted but ultimately it means that we have to keep paying back the money. There is no real deal. Reference was made to smoke and mirrors. That is it. We would do it differently. We do not see why we should pay any of the money back. In our view it would not be inflationary and it would be easy were the money to printed and written off as part of an overall debt reduction strategy.

It is not right to say that there is not a solution. We have said what is required is to strengthen the ECB and its ability to act as a lender of last resort. That is what we want.