Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said today Ireland was hoping to see the burden of its debt cut by between €15 billion and €20 billion.
Ireland is currently trying to negotiate with European partners to cut the cost of bailing out its banks by securing cheaper loans from the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund.
"While I can't tell you it will happen. I will tell you there is a process in place," Mr Noonan told the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin..
The Government secured a cut in the cost of its European loans in the summer that will save it about €900 million annually over 10 years.
Mr Noonan said without that reduction in the interest rate on the European loans and the loans longer maturities, his options heading into the 2012 budget, to be unveiled on December 6th, would have been much worse given weaker growth prospects and a drop in tax revenues. "If we didn't have it, we would have been in dreadful difficulty going into this budget," he said.
Looking ahead to tomorrow's publication of the Government's medium-term fiscal statement, he said it will give certainty to the economy. "What we're doing tomorrow is we're doing an analysis of the economic situation, where we're at at the minute in terms of the Irish economy and we're putting the facts on the table to support what we're
saying.
"As well as that, we'll be publishing a table which will show the targets for the deficit from now to 2015 and in 2015 the target will be below three per cent. And then we'll be showing the quantum of correction that has to take place in each year to achieve those annual targets and we'll be breaking the quantum down between tax increases
and expenditure cuts.
"We'll be doing that because we think that there are exaggerated views of the difficulties that we are facing going forward and people are holding back from making personal decisions and business decisions because of that," he said. "This will give certainty and it will provide a framework and abackground against which people can make their own decisions going forward."
Mr Noonan also said Ireland would have "great difficulty" in passing a referendum that would be required if an EU treaty is changed.
"We don't think we will get it through at present," Mr Noonan said when asked about a possible referendum on proposed economic reforms in the European Union. "I don't think from what we hear there will be any proposal to change the treaty for four or five years.”
Mr Noonan also said elections in Greece would not necessarily be a bad thing as it could boost a government's authority and ease political uncertainty.
"People have a lot of theories about what's happening in Greece. But if you look back 12 months, we had
very similar problems in Ireland when the Fianna Fáil-Green government was disintegrating and we didn't know from day to day whether the Greens were in or whether the Greens were out, whether the Budget would pass or whether the Finance Bill would go through.
"And eventually there was a move against the leader of the [Fianna Fáil] party and the leader was replaced and then there was an election.
"But elections are a normal process of democracy and I suppose Europe, the 27, is a great example of democratic nations looking after the interests of their citizens.
"There is an election in Spain on November 20th, they have just completed the election in Poland and the government were re-elected, so if Mr Papandreou loses the confidence of the parliament and there is a general election, well then they should get on with it and have the election, that's the way things are decided in democracies."
