 Thanks, Jill. As Jill said, I currently work with the Sunday Times, and next month I'm joining the Sunday Independent. So I'm going to try and hit that balance and objectivity that Konstantin Gurjiyev, the Russian economist, and Shane Ross, the senator, would be known for in my speech. Going back to, for me, the whole thing when it really came home to me was on November the 30th, 2010, which was two days after the 82 and a half billion euro bailout had just been announced. And I remember I was standing on a bridge in Dublin's, Docklands, and I was kind of keeping an eye out for whether anyone was around. And I thought I was being pretty casual about it, but I probably looked quite furtive. And then this little door opened, and there was a shortish, well, it was my height, a white haired man opened the door and I slipped in. And I was doing what I didn't know at the time but what was to become my final interview with Sean Fitzpatrick. And he was quite bewildered that it had come to this, that it had come to, you know, we'd known we were in trouble, but it had come to an 80 billion euro bailout and the loss of sovereignty. Back when we'd started doing interviews on and off, it started in January 2010. At that stage, everybody knew Anglo was going to cost billions, the other banks are going to cost billions, but we didn't, most people would have thought it was, you know, single digit billions, maybe in the tens, but no more than that. In Anglo's case, I mean, it was fascinating to see how, on the night of the guarantee in September 2008, PWC was advising the government, one and a half billion max. By April 2009, PWC was advising the government, four billion on the outside, if everything goes really, really bad, and this was at a time when John Fitzpatrick and David Drummond left the bank. There was no suggestion of anyone hiding anything from them. They could see what was there. From there, it rapidly went from, you know, it went from four to over 10 to 25, to eventually 25 to 34 billion, which is an absolutely colossal sum. If you think about it, if it's the top of the range, which is 34 billion, that would take about 144,000 people working on the average industrial wage, which would all be pushed back onto them eventually by Europe. It would take them their entire working lives to repay that sum. Assuming they retire at 65, which we may not be allowed to, we may have to work to 80, unless we get a deal, of course. And I remember talking to Sean about this, and during the period of January to November, you know, when I met him first, he was pretty upbeat. He felt, you know, yeah, he was pretty shocked at his personal experience. That was tough. But he figured, first of all, he might be able to repay the money. Had an Algerian oil well. This could come good, and if it came good, he might be able to repay the money and clear his name. With time, he also felt that some of the pressures the banks were under from Sean Quinn, et cetera, would come out or would emerge, and people might say, well, you know, he was a bad guy, but maybe he wasn't the worst guy. But like Ireland, he was on a railroad. He was heading towards something which he remained far too optimistic about, and didn't recognize the reality, all until it was too late. By that summer, July 2010, you know, he went to the High Court in Files for Bankruptcy. His assets were taken off him. They're being sold off to pay his creditors. What he can't pay, which is probably around, you know, 70 cents in the euro, that's just gonna have to be written off, and the world will roll on. For Ireland, though, it's not that simple. When we went bust in November 2010, through all of the things, excessive public spending, the banks going crazy, we aren't going to be able to just walk away from our debts like that. Instead, we accept to the government guarantee, which has never really been questioned, and we're going to have to pay all of our creditors 100 cents in the euro, which is absolutely crazy, and would never happen in any insolvency situation full stop, except for in this case, when it's the country. And this has, of course, gone down well with some quarters in Europe. So last month, Jürgen Stark, a board member of the European Central Bank, saying, you know, we're a role model, and isn't it great that there's consensus, politically and economically, to accept these austerity measures? And, you know, he's right, and Europe is right that, you know, we need to take some amount of pain. If you look at between 2004 and today, you know, our gross current spending went from 39 billion to 60 billion. That's a rise at 55% in a very short space of time. I mean, clearly, we've got to take some steps back, and we've got to tackle some of the obstacles taking those steps back in the spending, which I would include in the Crow Park Agreement, which was absolutely unbelievable that we signed up to such an inflexible agreement at a time when Ireland really, really needs to be flexible. So you can kind of understand why in Europe they both see us as good, and they see us as bad. Good and bad boys. And you can see why there is this gathering momentum around austerity, because we're not bad enough to cause them trouble, yet we're good enough to keep accepting it. If you look at what Davey, the stockbroker said, they say that between now and 2015, we're going to take 33 billion out of the economy. That's about 25% of GNP in a very short space of time. That's the sort of contraction you don't see in Europe or America. You might see it in a very poor country in Africa or a rogue Latin America state. We're going to see it here in this country. And I'd argue that that treatment is going to kill the patient. I'm a business journalist. I'm not an expert on Europe. Every week we're dealing with the people who are going bust and are losing everything they've ever worked for. These guys weren't heavy hitters in the boom. They weren't bankers. They're just ordinary guys who got it wrong. And they are the lifeblood of the economy and they're being sucked out of it. These are the small and the medium enterprises. And what started as a problem in the construction sector is now impacting every single business. This reality I don't think is being expressed strongly enough to Europe because Irish people we're not the kind of people who rise. And I think that that's a good thing. But we do need to start becoming the type of people who complain and complain a lot more. And I think that this is something that the Irish government needs to press home to Europe. We shouldn't be spending all of our time making this incredible effort to get Kevin Cardiff, a man formerly associated with overseeing the banks. We shouldn't be making this incredible effort to get him appointing European court holders. We should be making an incredible effort to argue the case for the country and get a fair deal from Europe. There's been a number of very important steps. We've got, we brought in Pat Cronin, we brought in Machua Elderfield. And I think that they're both respected from the incredible Governor of the Central Bank. And I think we've got a credible financial regulator. Politically, the leadership has been okay. But I think that they're still cruising on the argument that they're not being involved. They need to start saying to Europe who we are. And I think that if we keep calling back, you know, nobody's gonna be able to buy anything. Nobody has ever deflated them, deflated their wage prosperity. And we still, the way that things are going, we're not gonna be able to rely on our exports anymore. Either if you look at America, Europe, China, all of these places are talking about spending less. If they're all calling back, it's worth looking at like Paul Krugman, the American economy said this week, like if everybody calls back, what scenario will anybody buy? It's going to feed into itself. And, you know, it's very rare for me to quote, quote Vincent O'Toole, who's a notice at theater critic, but he just said, he did say, he's going to buy this week. You know, is it time for Ireland to get stroppy? And he might have something there. I think that Europe is right to receive Ireland that is still needing to take some tough decisions. And it's right to say that, you know, we do need to have some sort of fiscal discipline and we need to take on some of the vested interests. Well, on the other hand, it's very wrong for Europe to say we have to pay the bond bonus. The reality is, you know, the holders of these bonds are not, in many cases, the original institutions who lend money to the Irish Bank or Irish Nationwide. Instead, these banks, because they're, they value their credit rating, when they see something risky, they start selling it down and getting rid of it. And the people who buy that are hedge funds and speculators and we're making them very, very wealthy with our foolishness. I think we need to start getting tough on that while accepting what Europe is saying that we have to start cutting our cost to suit a new reality. You know, we have to not be a doormat. We need to ensure that we are grateful to our European partners, keep them on board, we'll be prepared to use the stick of, we're gonna put this to the people and have a referendum, guys, if you don't give us a decent deal. We have to make that very explicit to Europe. You know, we've made, outlined our strengths, you know, we're three years ahead of most countries in terms of reshaping our banks. We have actually recognized the hold in our banks, which most other places haven't. We've got a NAMA in place for our property assets. There's going to be similar NAMAs across Europe, maybe for property assets or for different types of assets. We need to say that, you know, this is an economy that's worth saving. There's strengths to it, like agriculture, technology, foreign direct investment. We can make it, but we've got to get a fair deal. And the principal area we need to fight this on is Anglo and Irish nation would, to boost banks, which are going to cost us three billion a year every year until 2024. That's absolutely crazy. There's no way that we can pay it. And we're paying it to speculators in many cases. This is the time to do the overdue work. We need not just austerity, but also stimulus. Nobody has ever taxed themselves under a recession. Ireland's reputation is gone. We've little to gain. People are not speaking for themselves. We might as well kick off. Our reputation is pretty ruined everywhere anyway. And otherwise, the Irish consumer and Irish businesses are going to continue to go under. And I think that the decision by Britain to veto the EU treaty, that this is actually, gives us a moment when we could strike a deal. The last thing Europe is going to want to see is if England is shaking, if Ireland starts looking shaky, they're not going to want that. And if we start talking about a referendum and bring it back to Canada and all that sort of stuff. We're going down a very dangerous road and no disrespect to Constantine Gurdjieff. Like I think that this is the time when we need to, the next couple of months, we want to be critical, we need to strike a deal with them. If you, to bring it back finally to Jean-Faith Patrick, where I started this speech, when he went bankrupt, under the old bankruptcy halls, he would get out of his bankruptcy in 12 to 14 years. The bankruptcy halls are going to be reformed in the next couple of months. And he's going to, along with every other bankruptcy, there will be hundreds of others. He's going to come out in three years. Ireland needs the rules to change, otherwise we're going to be stuck in some sort of downward cycle for about 14 years.