Without public trust, there will be no recovery

When I heard Leo Varadkar announce that the EU/ECB element of the troika had threatened that if the Government did not pay the €1.25bn unguaranteed debt to bank bondholders yesterday a financial bomb would go off in Dublin, and not in Frankfurt, it was all I could do to not eviscerate the TV.

This spineless Government’s approach to the repayment of €1.25bn unguaranteed debt to bondholders is that it is too small a sum to risk a possible bigger prise of a vaguely possible reduction in the interest payment on the €34bn promissory note on Anglo debt, and on which the Government has got exactly nowhere in negotiating to date.

The opposite is the case. It is because the sum is relatively speaking “small” that the Government should take its own advice, put on the green jersey for once and at least suspend the repayment. It can maintain the promise (or pretence) that it can and will pay at some point.