Minister takes issue with 'Irish Times' editorial

FIANNA FÁIL REACTION:MINISTER OF State for European Affairs Dick Roche has taken issue with yesterday's Irish Timeseditorial, which described the prospect of a bailout as "the ignominious end of a failed administration".

Mr Roche said he was "naturally disappointed" by the editorial but it was easy for The Irish Timesto "sit on the sidelines and do commentary" when the Government was putting its energy into resolving the banking crisis.

Speaking yesterday before a conference organised by the law firm Mason, Hayes & Curran, Mr Roche said the editorial contained "very strong words". He said there was no point in sniping at The Irish Times, but said the newspaper had "not made the greatest financial success of its own operations over the last few years".

Mr Roche said there was a “rather circulatory debate” going on about the nature of the intervention by the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission.

He said people should get away from the “continuous sniping debate” about what the intervention should be called.

“I don’t know if that mechanism will be in the form of funding, and it is really premature to say,” he said.

“It is not dissembling or avoiding the issue. It is a fact that if you have the commission, which are ramping up the level of their co-operation with us, [and] the IMF, if they are here to do a particular series of analysis, we should let them do it. We should not jump hurdles and say, ‘What does this mean?’ If it resolves the issue, that is what we should be focused on.”

Mr Roche has been one of the most high-profile representatives of the Government in recent days, particularly internationally.

He rejected a suggestion that he used the BBC's Newsnightto canvass for Fianna Fáil in the Donegal South West byelection, saying yesterday the election of Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty would not "send out the best message".

Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív said his grandfather Eamon de Valera had faced similar media criticism in the 1940s and 1950s.

“We have to make the decision in our time, in our circumstances in a much more interdependent world,” he said.

“We are members of Europe, we don’t have an independent currency. Mind you when he [de Valera] was taoiseach we didn’t have an independent currency either. It was linked with sterling.

“We have to make our decisions in our time and it is a difficult time to protect the interest of the ordinary people of this country,” Mr Ó Cuív added.