EU Commissioner Maire Geoghegan-Quinn has said that the Government has not applied for a financial bailout “as far as the Commission is concerned”.
Speaking in Galway this morning, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said that such a decision was a “matter for the Government”, but from the European Commission’s perspective “no application” had been made to the European Financial Stability Fund.
The markets would “respond”, once the Government’s four-year plan for the economy had been published, she added.
The EU research and innovation commissioner, who was in Galway to mark the 20th anniversary of the Covidien medical devices company, emphasised that the Irish economy had a “very solid base”.
“I think the Irish government has put forward very concrete steps that it intends to take to get the economy back again,” she said.
“That has been done by the Minister for Finance and by the Government. They will produce their budget in the next couple of weeks. They will also produce within two weeks a four-year programme for budgeting for the economy, and I think the markets will respond to that, once it has been published,” she said.
“But as for the bailout and an application to the stability fund, no application has been made by the Irish Government,” she reiterated.
Asked about international concerns about the euro, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said that the eurozone involved governments working together. Finance ministers set the conditions, and Ireland had been involved in these discussions said,. These conditions applied not only to Ireland, but to every country in the eurozone.
Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said it was “very important in the teeth of an economic crisis to realise and to expect that the Irish economy hasn’t gone away”.
“There is a real solid base for development in the Irish economy. We have a very, very well educated workforce, we have a very mobile workforce, they are very much prepared to work at the cutting edge of technology, and particularly in the medical devices area in Galway,” she said.