Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There will be a conversation about the multi-annual financial framework and the position the Government takes on it at Friday's Cabinet meeting. On the €750 stimulus fund, which has not yet been signed off on by EU leaders, Ireland was one of eight countries which advocated for the equivalent of a corona bond so that we could essentially create a collective borrowing strength across the EU in order to make funding available for countries that otherwise may struggle to be able to get competitive rates of borrowing to provide much needed stimuli in their economies, which have been devastated by Covid-19. We now have a proposal which is not a million miles away from that. The Government has welcomed it in principle. We think providing grant aid to countries is appropriate, but let us not forget that this is money that will be borrowed and all countries in the EU and its institutions will have to find a way of repaying it over time. We believe that the EU can service it quite comfortably and factor that into the EMF process over time. The barrier to that was, of course, a number of countries in the EU that did not want to create a collective borrowing responsibility and, therefore, increase their own exposure. We are going to get over that political obstacle, which is a good thing, and be able to provide significant grant aid to countries that desperately need significant injections of cash into their economies.

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