Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis

Nexus Phase

Mr. Brian Cowen:

We knew ... we knew that when we were in discussions with them in September. First of all, there was this question of ... they would be interested in the fiscal side of the equation, first of all. And in this sort of budgetary engagement that takes place between the European Commissioner concerned, Mr. Rehn, and the Finance Minister of Ireland, Brian Lenihan, there were also some ECB people who were in on those discussions. Mr. Stark would be one of them. And they would always be more ... they would be saying "Cut this deficit by €8 billion", and we'd say, "No, we don't think that's doable and we don't think that's right. We think, you know, we have other things in mind." So you'd start discussing that and eventually it ended up with ... it wasn't quite €6 billion, it was some ... there was some one-off savings that we made that was included in that €6 billion, it might've been maybe €5.3 billion plus €700 million of a one-off benefit.

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