Loans to Ireland Bill

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will make a bit of progress and then of course take some further interventions. In my remarks today, I intend to address both the substance of the legislation and the loan agreement, but before that let me briefly say something about how we got here. Over the course of this year, it became increasingly clear that the situation in the Irish economy was unsustainable. Their sovereign debt markets had effectively closed and had little prospect of re-opening. Ireland's market interest rates had risen to record levels, and Irish banks had become almost wholly reliant on central bank funding to maintain their operations, with no obvious prospect that that was going to change. This situation simply could not go on. We had been monitoring the situation for many months and had engaged in confidential discussions with our partners in the G7 and at ECOFIN about possible solutions. Over the weekend of 20 November, Ireland's Prime Minister made a formal request for international financial assistance. The UK, alongside the International Monetary Fund, the EU, the eurozone and some other member states—Sweden and Denmark—made an agreement in principle to take part in putting together an assistance package for Ireland. Since then, the various interested parties have been working round the clock with the Irish authorities to put together a package. Officials from the British Treasury have been in Dublin in recent days ensuring that our interests and concerns were represented, and I want to thank them for their hard work. At the end of November, Ireland agreed with the IMF and the EU a three-year financial assistance package worth €85 billion.