John Gilroy (Labour)

A party that ruined the country told Sinn Féin it was economically illiterate. The party that ruined the country is still the party that ruined the country and Sinn Féin is still economically illiterate. I wish to point out three things about Sinn Féin's comprehensive position as outlined by Senator Cullinane. He said we can deal with the exceptional liquidity assistance, ELA, and the promissory notes in a different way, that we can somehow unilaterally rewrite the promissory notes to take care of the ELA. However, he does not answer the question of how that would then fit into the TARGET2 system. He might not have heard that term before. It would undermine the entire system of euro transactions if we unilaterally interfered with the ELA. It would also undermine the rules of monetary policy if we did that. What is more important is that while we could do that economically, it would destroy the reputation of the country. Of course, politics is about relationships - in this case, relationships with our partners in Europe and trying to find a common way forward. Although we said while discussing the previous section that progress was slower than we had hoped, it is working. Before we came into Government, the interest rate Ireland was paying on the secondary bond markets was more than 15% and was actually coming close to 16%; it is now less than 7%.