As we pay €713m we don’t owe, our EU ‘leaders’ live in jet-set style

THE State yesterday handed over €713m to unsecured Anglo Irish bondholders and will pay out €1.25bn in January.

The Financial Times dubbed yesterday’s payment “a windfall profit for high-risk investors” and said the bonds had been trading as low as 52cent in the euro earlier this year. Someone, somewhere, is today toasting the Government and its determination to beggar the nation by paying debts it doesn’t owe.

While crippling austerity measures are inflicted on long-suffering citizens, who are expected to lie back and think of the bondholders, politicians at home and abroad have not shown the same eagerness to subject themselves to cuts.