We need to make a stand over our mounting debt mountain

If you were in dispute with your bank over a large sum of money, with considerable merit to your arguments for having that debt greatly reduced or even written off completely, would you go off and borrow from another source — at interest rates even higher than your bank was going to charge — the entire amount to make the first massive instalment payment?

Worse, would you then set the terms of the new locked-in loan so that it’s not you but your children who will actually pay off that loan? And plan on doing something similar with the rest of the disputed debt?

In a nutshell that’s what Michael Noonan did last week. He took a debt that was negotiable, arguable — the promissory notes — and converted it into a non-negotiable inarguable government bond, a bond that will be paid in 2025. By then Michael, along with Enda Kenny and the rest of this lamentable cabinet, will be long gone from office, enjoying their fat pensions even as the next generation is left to deal with this legacy.