Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

As the Deputy acknowledged in her contribution, the way the IMF operates today is significantly different from the way it was accustomed to operating in the 1980s. By way of clarification, the two IMF conferences I attended on behalf of the Minister for Finance took place in September or early October 2008 in Washington and the following year at about the same time in Istanbul. The Minister attended a conference in 2010. The agreement of April 2008, which this is implementing, was before my time as Minister of State. There may have been a meeting at which we would have been represented by officials rather than a Minister.

We are perhaps conflating into one question two different things. Until late last autumn we had a relationship with the IMF whereby it was multilateral body which came here and carried out a review of our economy in some detail every two years. I am sure there Deputy has read some of the reports.

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