Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I made it clear yesterday evening that I am not responsible for the rumour mill all over Europe or elsewhere. I was told last Friday that, as Head of this Government, I had made an application at that stage to enter a facility, which was not true. Despite the fact that I said it was not true, the person who asked me the question seemed to think it was true. What I was indicating was that the suggestion that we had applied to enter a facility was not correct. At the G20 meeting in Seoul obviously discussions took place on the currency situation worldwide, including the euro. Obviously the situation in Ireland and other countries, which has been the source of public comment for some time, was mentioned there as well. What was welcome about the Seoul statement from the finance Ministers concerned was that should the question emerge at the December Council meeting regarding private sector involvement in the whole question of public debt and how that was to be paid off in the future, in the event of there being problems in any particular situation, which is not ours, that would mean it would only relate to debt that would take place after 2013. That provided a lot of reassurance, presumably, to the markets which were interpreting comments on this matter in previous weeks as if it related to debt - existing debt or debt that was already within the overall public debt portfolio of states, which was not the situation. That is from where that emerged.

The second point that emerged was that, as I have already said, discussions have been going on all the time on the whole banking situation - generally the European Central Bank and the central banks themselves. The European Central Bank, governing bodies and governors have all had their views on these matters. At the end of the day I was simply confirming a fact as far as Ireland was concerned, which is that we had not applied to any facility and despite the fact that it was being mentioned in a lot of so-called reputable news organisations it did not make it any truer. That is the first point.

The second point relates to the wider issues that have emerged regarding the currency itself. Market conditions have not normalised as we can see. There are concerns out there regarding the markets. From our point of view it gives rise to concerns. We are discussing with other European partners what stabilisation is necessary and what further policy initiatives might be considered. That is an issue that is being discussed at ECOFIN level and finance Minister level on an ongoing basis at their monthly meeting and obviously officials have been involved in those discussions, but we have not been involved politically in those discussions until such time as today's meeting takes place. I mentioned I took a phone call from the President of the Commission last Friday and I made it very clear, if anyone wanted to know, that we had not made any applications for the facility and obviously he was happy for me to confirm that.

These are matters at all times for sovereign governments. At the moment we are making sure that regarding our own situation it is understood that we are pre-funded up to the middle of 2011. Regarding banking policy, we have taken all the necessary steps with full transparency - a lot more transparency than might be attempted to be conveyed by others - regarding how we are dealing with our banking situation. We have done the guarantee; we have done the capitalisation; we have segregated the assets; we have set a very rigorous test on the capital requirements of banks - it is 8% tier 1 capital requirement, including 7%-----

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