Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)

Even if the Minister told us that and told us what the negotiating position is, it would help.

Talking about negotiating positions, who are the negotiators? The Minister for Finance has primary responsibility but is it solely officials from his Department or is he assisted by people from the regulator's office and the Central Bank? Is he bringing in consultants and are there any outside experts in the loop or any who have experience of the IMF? Is the Minister confident his officials have the expertise to negotiate deals with these people? That is not an offensive remark directed at the Minister's officials but they would not have had negotiations with the IMF before, whatever about having talks with the Commission or the European Central Bank. It would be helpful if we knew that as well.

I understand the legal position is that the IMF is required to draw up a memorandum of understanding with recipient nations when it gives them funds. I also understand that a similar approach has been adopted by the euro fund in Berlin, which has €60 billion in capital at present, and it also requires a memorandum of understanding. Will there be one or two? Will there be an amalgamated memorandum of understanding or will there be two separate ones? What are the review periods built into the memorandum of understanding? Most importantly, it has been stated a number of times by Commissioner Olli Rehn and by various spokespersons for him that the advancement of funds is based on conditionality. What are the primary conditions set down for the payment of these funds to Ireland? While we will have questions later, that is my first run of questions.

I do not want to labour the point. It is a serious time and a serious situation. We have been involved in the blame game for too long and it is time to get on to real solutions. However, we need convincing that the Minister has a grip of the situation and that what he is proposing does not get us into greater difficulty. In the past, the Minister made proposals here with great conviction and they have contributed to the problem rather than to the solution.

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