Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know all that. Those of us who are looking for the magic bullet still have not found it and the task of the Irish Government when we got the mandate we received in the 2011 election was to do our best to renegotiate what was a bad deal for this country, a deal that did not help our prospects.

Many people have been voting and betting against this country in the past few years. Celebrity economic commentators, the Sinn Féin Party and those who previously were one of the great defenders of the banks now in the Technical Group have been having a huge punt against this country for the last few years hoping that things would go in one direction because their own personal egos would be helped by that. They are getting it badly wrong. This country is coming back.

I was at the ECOFIN mreting earlier this week with the Minister, Deputy Noonon, where I have the pleasure of calling him Monsieur le Président, as he is the chair of the ECOFIN group, and he enjoys that I might add. One of things one gleans from speaking to the finance Ministers of the 27 member states is that people are talking about Ireland. They recognise that we are going to come out of this programme and that we are making a success of our programme. They talk about the fact that Irish ten-year debt is down to 3.8% where it was 15%. They know this and that has a huge impact on our country. As other Senators on the Government side have said, we are not going to get money into companies like the ESB and Bord Gáis and for PPPs unless we can make the Irish sovereign debt issue look less risky.

I welcome the support of Senators, and particularly that of the Fianna Fáil Party, for the deal. The speech of Deputy Michael McGrath, the Fianna Fáil spokesperson in the Dáil was deeply patriotic. He put the interest of the country before that of his party. It is important that this be recognised. The only way to get out of this difficulty is to work together on an agreed strategy, and that strategy is proving successful.

Where did we go this year? We have got this important deal, but we are not swinging from the rafters in celebration of it. As Senator Hayden said, it was with relief rather than anything else that it was negotiated. We know the people were looking for it. They have suffered badly. I live in an ordinary housing estate, like lots of other ordinary people, and I see all around me the impact of the current situation. Decent people cannot find work and their children are emigrating. I am not in some kind of parallel universe. Like the great majority of politicians I live in the real world. We have to work hard for our people to get the country back to a better place.

The deal has been put in place but we have other plans for 2013. We hope to extend the maturities on the European money, which is two thirds of the total amount we got. We have already done a deal on the interest rate. Now we want to extend the maturities on it. At some point this year, there will be a launch of ten year Irish money for the first time in three and a half years. If we get two of them over the line we will be, effectively, back to the markets and the outright money transaction, OMT, that Mr. Draghi has been promising us will come into being. That is success. We are talking in terms of the banking union later this year. Only one half of the debt has been dealt with through this issue, but the ESM, through banking union, is the other part of the game. That kind of incremental progress on a month by month basis will get the country to a better place.

As other colleagues have said, the ECB does not do write-downs. I was in the room when the Greek deal was done. It had nothing to do with the ECB. It was all about public sector involvement and private sector involvement. Private sector involvement meant the banks taking a haircut and the public sector involvement meant that if a person had Greek debt, they were not going to take any interest on it. It had nothing to do with the ECB. Looking to the ECB for something it does not give will not be productive.

I agree with one comment that was made. The involvement of Mr. Draghi is absolutely crucial. The legacy of Mr. Trichet was not the best. I say that in the most diplomatic way I possibly can.