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Ireland: Financial Assistance

My Lords, any bilateral loan, as my right honourable friend the Chancellor has said, will require primary legislation. So it will go through the normal processes, including those of this House. It is in the UK’s interest to ensure that there is a strong eurozone. The present difficulties have brought to the attention of eurozone members—and of those of us who wish to see a strong zone but who are not in it—the fact that there are a number of defects in the architecture, of which the need for a permanent bail-out arrangement is one. We will work constructively with our partners in Europe to ensure that the eurozone is better able in future to withstand any buffeting of individual economies such as we are seeing at the moment.