THE US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner was scheduled to spend just half an hour with Minister for Finance Michael Noonan when they met for the first time late on Tuesday, but the men talked for more than 45 minutes.
“It was I [who] had to finish it up because I had other meetings,” Mr Noonan said. “He was in quite a chatty mood, we could have stayed a bit longer.”
Mr Geithner said he would use his influence in Europe to seek lower interest rates for the Irish, Greek and Portuguese bailouts.
“American politicians at the top level, in my experience, are the best briefed people in the world,” Mr Noonan said. “Tim Geithner had a very detailed knowledge of Ireland . . . He is as well briefed as my colleagues in Ecofin would be.”
The treasury secretary gave Mr Noonan his personal phone numbers. “If something happens suddenly, I have someone to talk to,” he said.
Mr Noonan sought advice from investors and officials in New York and Washington. All gave the same counsel, he said.
“Stick to the programme. Restructure the banks as quickly as possible, which we are doing anyway. And keep controlling the deficits, get the economy back to growth again and pick up confidence at home so that the export-led growth is matched by growth in the domestic economy.”
The difficulty, Mr Noonan added, was that €10 billion in Government cuts this year and next year removed €10 billion in spending power from a small economy.
Anglo Irish Bank owns between $10 billion and $11 billion worth of property on the east coast and elsewhere in the US. Consultants have been retained to advise on their sale and Mr Noonan expected to have a clearer idea of how to proceed within 48 hours.
“The general objective at present is that, by Christmas, the Anglo book in the US would have been sorted.”
Mr Noonan’s meetings in the US have been dominated by the Greek crisis. “I wanted to draw a very sharp contrast between the Irish economy and the Greek economy because, once you leave Ireland, people tend to put Portugal, Greece and Ireland together,” he said.
The Minister will participate in further discussions on Greece in Luxembourg on Sunday and Monday. Ireland would have “limited enough influence” because “it tends to be the larger countries . . . the people who underpin the financing of the European Union, who will be the real decision-makers”.
As “good Europeans”, Ireland “wants a programme that works for Greece, and we don’t wish them any ill luck of any sort”.
At the same time, “we also have a very strong self-interest. We know that events could take a bad turn in Greece and there would be an adverse, knock-on effect in Ireland. So my primary concern . . . is to make sure that if decisions are made about Greece, there are complementary decisions . . . to firewall us against any adverse effects.”
The rebirth of Ireland’s tourism industry has been another theme of Mr Noonan’s visit. Tourism has declined 30 per cent over the past three years. “If we just gain the ground lost, we will have a huge boost,” he said.
To this end, Mr Noonan will participate in a Bloomsday event in Bryant Park in Manhattan, New York, today, by reading a passage from Ulysses.
His main purpose was “to let the American public know that the industry has reduced prices and the government has reduced the sales tax”, he said.
“How we package it and how foolish we have to look, that doesn’t really matter. If we can get a few plane-loads of tourists, I’m willing to humiliate myself.”
