Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will raise a number of issues. I am sorry that Senator Cullinane has left. We had plenty of noise in the Chamber last Thursday morning. There was no shortage of it, and it appears to be continuing. The Sinn Féin position is to talk out of both sides of its mouth and to misrepresent the situation. Its Members have a way with words.

As Senator Bacik outlined, the ¤3.1 billion was sovereign debt, in that we were going to pay it every year for the next ten years.

We had another scenario with Deputy Doherty who stated in the other House that even though he recognised that the ECB could not write down the debt we should have asked for it anyway. That is the politics and the economics of the land of nod; we know we cannot get it but we should ask for it anyway.

I welcome the deal. We are not foolish enough to believe it is a solution to all our problems but the most important aspect of it is not the way we view ourselves but how others outside this country view us, including the international markets, the ratings agencies and the foreign direct investment companies. Not only does the deal provide ease in terms of the methods of our borrowing requirements in the coming years but it will also ease the journey of the many of our State companies which want to borrow on the international markets.

It is important to record the scenario of the price of a house in 1983 and the price of a house in 1980. I got a text from a young man in the University of Limerick who said that in 1973 the price of a pint was 19 pence. Incidentally, that was the last year Limerick won the All-Ireland; it could be another 40 years before they win the next one. The price of a pint today is ¤3.85. That puts things into perspective.

During the discussion with the Minister, Deputy Noonan, he made a very good point. He said if somebody told us we had a debt and we did not have to pay anything on the capital for the next 30 years, and we got the interest at less than 1% and we were in business, as Senator Quinn rightly said, it does not matter what the volumes of money are, what matters is the management of that money over a long period. What we have is a write-down in effect because the value of that money in 40 years' time will blow itself out.