Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the level of support that he envisages will be available post-2013 for Irish budgets from the European Stability Mechanism; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1455/13]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The purpose of the ESM is to arrange funding and provide financial assistance, under strict economic policy conditionality, to the benefit of such ESM Members (i.e. Euro Area members) as may be either experiencing, or threatened by, severe financing problems, if seen as indispensable to safeguarding the financial stability of the euro area as a whole.

Ireland’s EU-IMF Programme runs to the end of this year and it is the Government’s intention to successfully exit from our EU/IMF programme at that time. We are taking all steps necessary to achieve this objective. This means meeting all of our commitments – as we have done to date. It also means securing a satisfactory outcome in relation to alleviating the cost of our banking support measures.

Both the EU and IMF have in place facilities that allow countries that have exited programmes and find they are unable to fully fund themselves to receive support. The ESM will be the source of such funding from the EU. Such facilities of course involve additional conditionality.

On our successful exit from our programme I fully expect that Ireland will be able to fund itself through the international financial markets. In that context, the availability of the ESM to Ireland, as to all other Euro Area member states, provides a safety net, or insurance policy, that gives reassurance to financial markets on the availability of a funding source. The availability to Ireland of a credible funding backup as provided by the ESM Treaty will be very important in terms of market re-entry and leaving the EU / IMF Programme of Support. However, I do not expect that we will need to avail of this.