EUROPEAN NEGOTIATIONS:MINISTER FOR Finance Michael Noonan is hopeful agreement can be reached on the interest rate Ireland pays for the EU-IMF loans, at the same time as the rescue deal for Portugal.
He said they made “significant progress” in the negotiations on the rate at last weekend’s informal meeting of EU finance ministers in Budapest.
“We’ll take that up again when it come to the Ecofin meeting in May. After speaking with the finance ministers of France and Germany they have agreed a process with me and the process is that we leave it to our technical people, our officials, to come up with a joint narrative, a joint position on that.”
He called the talks on cutting the rate a “work in progress”. They were keeping European economics commissioner Olli Rehn and his commission colleagues informed, “but it’s going well”.
Speaking at a press conference about the review of the first three months of the EU-IMF aid package, he said “there is a process in progress at official level which I hope will culminate in an agreement at official level”, which will then be “submitted for sanction at ministerial level”.
He added: “I would like if it could occur at the same time as the deal is being done for Portugal. That will be what will decide the date.” He also played down the row over corporate tax and said the commission’s policy paper on corporate tax, introduced just before St Patrick’s Day was problematic for all 27 member states.
It was “going to a committee for refinement” before ministers discuss it and “we have no problem in participating in that debate”. He said “as a matter of fact France would have greater difficulties than we would have with it as currently conceived”.
Asked about the implementation of the Croke Park agreement, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin said they would have “the next snapshot in June of what we need”.
The agreement was “extremely important” and “we’ll be able to see in detail not only how far we’ve travelled but how much further we need to go to achieve the sort of savings both in numbers terms and in flexibility and cash terms that are imperative if we’re going to achieve the fiscal targets set out”.
Mr Noonan said the Government did not want to make pay cuts, but “we have to make savings in the payroll bill of the public service”.
He said the previous government put it in as a condition in the memorandum of understanding with the IMF and EU that there would be “further pay cuts in public service pay unless the savings run through from the other initiatives already taken”, because these were part of the conditions “on which we draw down funding”.
Mr Howlin said this was already in the Croke Park agreement and “the implementation team and the unions understand that”.
