This is the government press conference held in Dublin on the night which saw the announcement of the Irish banking bailout. Held simultaneously with a EU press conference broadcasting from Brussels, the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen, and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, made their announcement live on national tv to the Irish public. An €85bn deal was announced, which later transpired to be €67.5bn of assistance from the EU & IMF combined, and €17.5bn from already available Irish case reserves (including the national pension fund). The Q&A session at the end contains an interesting exchange between Cowen and broadcaster Vincent Browne, which sums up the general feeling on the ground here in Ireland.
Bailout literature: The Irish Department of Finance has published the 'Memorandum of Understanding' between it and the EU/IMF, and Politico.ie has released a proper text PDF version of that. The Irish government chose to only release it in image form, through Scribd, which means the text will not be searchable. Well done to Politico.ie for sorting that out! |