Arrogance and childish petulance versus chrome-domed reasonableness.

There can only be one winner.

Independent TD Stephen Donnelly (above) and Fine Gael Junior Minister Brian Hayes (top) joined Pat Kenny this morning to talk about reports of a leaked confidential Troika document outlining proposals for a seven-year extension of Ireland and Portugal’s EU/IMF bailout.

Take a seat.

Brian Hayes: “If you can stretch out the payments like you can, if you could for your mortgage or other forms of loans, that would make sense. So the key thing is Ireland and Portugal put this thing on the table last January. The Commission then gave a report. The Troika are now bringing forward the report. I see some of it may or may not have been leaked to the papers from Reuters last evening. That report will be discusses at the ECOFIN meeting in Dublin this weekend, which is an informal meeting. And we’ll see where it goes.”

Pat Kenny: “What will it mean in practical terms. I mean if you do get an average of seven years extension on all these loans. Some of which are due relatively soon. What does it mean in practical terms, in terms of the Budget every year for example?”

Hayes: “It will not make a huge difference to the budget arithmetic but  it will help, make a huge difference in respect of our return to the markets because if you owe a €100 and you’ve to pay it back next year and you can then get a term extension over a number of years, say €20 a year, for the next five years, that obviously means that there’s less money to be paid back each year and it gives you more breathing space.”

Kenny: “Is this a process absolutely separate from the legacy debt?”

Hayes: “Yes. It is. Totally separate. That is another issue. It’s an issue that we’re working hard on but it’s a medium-term issue. Where this issue…this is effectively the money that we’ve already drawn down Pat. When we went into the bailout programme and used both of those (EFSF and EFSM) funds from, two-thirds effectively two-thirds of the money involved, it was quite tight in terms of the payback time. Now we’ve been arguing since, if we get a longer maturity, it makes it easier for us to get back to the markets and make things like debt position more sustainable. Ireland becomes more attractive to investors. The key in all this debate, I mean when you talk about debt, and moving on ten year money is, how do you get money back into Ireland? How do you get the private sector investment going? And the key to it is this, if the stake is less, looks less risky, from a sovereign perspective, as we clearly have, because the cost of ten-year money has gone down from 15%  to less than 4% last night. You know if you get that perception out there, money is coming back into Ireland.”

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