---

Loans to Ireland Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Lessons will have to be learned, not so much about the euro per se but about the performance of the European Central Bank. There is a serious question to be asked about its insistence on low interest rates for a sustained period. That helped to feed the property bubble in Ireland, despite the valiant efforts of the then Finance Minister to find other ways of getting out of the economy the money that was fuelling the property bubble, such as paying off the national debt, putting big money into the national pensions reserve fund and introducing special savings investment accounts.