I presume the Deputy is referring to an article written by Professor Patrick Honohan and published in the Irish Banking Review in April 1994. While Professor Honohan is employed by the Economic and Social Research Institute, I understand that he wrote the article in his private capacity and it is not a report published by the ESRI.
Professor Honohan's figure of £350 million is his estimate of the direct cost to the Irish Exchequer of not devaluing the Irish pound in September 1992, when the currency crisis began, but waiting instead until end-January 1993. The figure is based on what Professor Honohan acknowledges is a "somewhat unrealistic hypothesis". Essentially, the figure would only be valid if the option of a 10 per cent devaluation of the central rate of the Irish pound in the ERM had been available in September 1992, if it would have represented a sound policy move at that stage and if it would have been followed by the positive interest rate developments which characterised the period after the January 1993 devaluation. As the first two of these conditions were not in fact fulfilled and as there is no reason to believe that the third would have been fulfilled to the extend assumed I do not consider Professor Honohan's figure to be a realistic one.