Payment of promissory notes is 'insanity', says Trinity finance expert

Finance expert Brian Lucey is describing as "insanity" the payment of €3.1bn for the Anglo promissory notes in March 2013, nearly the equivalent of the removal from the economy of €3.5bn in tomorrow's budget.

The money will be given to the Central Bank where it will then cease to exist.

Lucey, Professor of Finance at Trinity College, Dublin told KFM that this makes no moral sense, and is describing it as insanity.

Mr Lucey said: "In cashflow terms, we will then give that to Patrick Honohan who will then burn it. This makes no moral, economic or political sense.

"Nobody believes it makes sense yet they are going to do it. Fine Gael and Labour will troop through the lobbies and say we don't like this but have to do it.

"Fianna Fáil will say this is terrible and they shouldn't do it, having created the need to do it. They are all complicit in this insanity."