Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Forthcoming ECOFIN Council: Discussion with Minister for Finance

6:20 pm

Photo of Michael NoonanMichael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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We have no specific plans at this time. However, much of the Deputy's analysis is correct in that the root cause of the Irish crisis was a banking crisis. Whatever add-ons one assigns to it, that was the root cause. As such, the troika will not sign off on Ireland's exit from the bailout programme without a re-evaluation of the banks which shows they are adequately capitalised. That is part of the exit programme but the timing is an issue. We may be asked to do our stress testing somewhat ahead of the European banking system but not before 2014. We have agreed with the troika that the exact same ground rules for stress testing will apply in our case. In other words, we will not have to do a more onerous stress test than other member states, as was the case in the first months of 2011. We will be stress tested under the same rules applying top other countries but perhaps a month or two ahead of them.