Boyle reveals Green pain at role in previous cabinet

The ECB sought to attach a “huge punitive element” to Ireland’s bailout, former Green Party senator Dan Boyle has said.

In his new book charting the Greens’ ill-fated role in the previous government, Mr Boyle says the ECB wanted to impose interest of as much as 7% on Ireland’s bailout loans during the Nov 2010 negotiations.

“The opening percentage for the package being offered was 7%. This was not much below the rate available to the country on the international money markets. There wasn’t any doubt that there was a huge punitive element attached to all this,” he writes in the book, extracts of which are published in today’s Irish Examiner.