The Government put contingency plans in place at the height of the economic crisis to have soldiers on standby to protect banks in the event of a rush by people to withdraw cash, it emerged today

Tánaiste Joan Burton confirmed the existence of the plans which were put in place by the last government under then taoiseach Brian Cowen but which were later approved by Taoiseach, Enda Kenny when Fine Gael and Labour took power went in 2011.

“It seems like a long time ago though it is less than four years since we came into Government. Yes, the times were very difficult. There was a huge emphasis on security because the Queen of England was about to visit as was (President) Barack Obama,” she said.

“There were concerns in relation to the banks though, thankfully, none of that contingency type of planning was needed (to be acted upon),” said Ms Burton at a conference in Cork entitled entitled ‘Ireland’s Economic Recovery: What next?” hosted by Cork Chamber.”

“The important thing today is that, year on year, unemployment has fallen...what that means in practical terms is that a lot of people who were not working are now working and families have an income.”

“I think what we really need to concentrate on now, interesting and all as the history is, is how we move the economy forward and how we get a social recovery into the economy,” said Ms Burton.

Details of the plan to have army units on standby to provide security around Irish bank centres were disclosed by Minister for Defence Simon Coveney in the course of an interview with Newstalk this morning prior to attending the same conference.

In the course of defending Enda Kenny's leadership of Fine Gael following criticism from former Fine Gael minister and current radio presenter, Ivan Yates, Mr Coveney said that Ireland owed a huge debt to Mr Kenny for his stewardship of the Irish economy.

“We were losing about 1,000 jobs per week. The economy was wrecked and the country was bust,” said Mr Coveney as he went on to describe “how close to the edge we were as a country because of political mismanagement in the past.

"The Taoiseach was getting briefed by the Central Bank that actually he needed to have a fall-back position whereby the Army might be needed to surround banks to protect them because we could literally run out of money,"he revealed.

Mr Coveney said Mr Kenny had lifted Ireland “from the floor” after years of political and economic mismanagement, and was still the right man to lead the Fine Gael party.

Yesterday, Mr Kenny pledged to reduce the top rate of income tax to under 50 per cent if the Government was re-elected in 2016.

Mr Kenny said the relatively high rate of personal taxation in the Republic was something that had to be addressed if the State was to remain internationally competitive.

Speaking at a special Thanksgiving event in Dublin hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, Mr Kenny said that Budget 2015 was the first year of a multi-year programme “to reduce job-damaging taxes on work”.

He said the top tax rate would be dropped to a maximum of 50 per cent in next October’s budget.

“And we will reduce the rate of income tax further in subsequent budgets if the people decide to re-elect this Government.”

The Taoiseach said the tax-reducing measures in the budget were specifically targeted at low- and middle-income workers “who pay high taxes at very modest income levels”.