Noonan: EU deal will mean 'easier' budgets
The Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said it is a good day for Ireland after the latest deal at the EU summit that will ease the pain of future budgets after this year.
Leaders meeting in Brussels overnight agreed to finally allow bank debt be moved off sovereign balance sheets.
Ireland had been hoping to get a deal on €30-€40bn of the €63bn that has been pumped into banks.
It will be up to finance ministers now to work out the details of the arrangements before the end of the year.
Michael Noonan has said that while the next budget will remain painful, others after that "will be a little easier".
However UCD Professor Karl Whelan believes politicians are getting ahead of themselves.
He has warned that the deal will not lead to "banking debt peace in our time".
Earlier, Taoiseach Enda Kenny described the deal as a seismic shift in European policy.
He maintained it means Ireland’s overall debt burden, including the bank debt, can be re-engineered in a way to give Ireland equal treatment to Spain and any other countries which avail of the new system.
“What was deemed to be unachievable has now become a reality and that principle has been established and decided and agreed upon by the council, by the heads of government,” he said in Brussels.
“But for us the more immediate impact is that Ireland is named as getting equal treatment as other countries with difficulties here.
“That means that heads of government’s decision will now be referred to the eurogroup (of eurozone finance ministers) for an analysis of how best this might be used in Ireland’s case to re-engineer the debt burden that is on our taxpayer, which is what we set out to do.”
