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Updated 1.10pm
FINANCE MINISTER MICHAEL Noonan has said that people will be “astounded at all the good news I’ll be announcing” in the Budget on Tuesday afternoon.
Speaking to delegates at the Fine Gael national conference in Limerick, Noonan said that it will not be enough to get out of the bailout at the end of the year saying: “We have to get out and stay out.”
The Minister said that the country is fully funded into 2015 even without any additional borrowing and dropped a hint that Ireland may not need a precautionary credit facility when it exits the Troika programme.
This came after similar comments from the EU economic commissioner Olli Rehn last night.
At the end of his speech Noonan said he looked forward to people tuning into his Budget speech on Tuesday and said: “You’ll be astounded at all the good news I’ll be announcing!”
Earlier in a discussion involving other senior ministers and Fine Gael backbenchers, Noonan said there are still “bits and bobs” to work on in the Budget ahead of next Tuesday’s announcement but that a lot of the “heavy lifting” will be done with a growing economy.
Noonan said: “We have to continue meeting the targets imposed on us through the bailout and that means that this Budget will be reasonably tough.
“But this year we had a bit of room to ease back a little… and we promised people we would ease back a little.”
Noonan said that the government is aware of how “fraught” life is for a lot of families, adding: “A lot of individuals are on the edge, so we will be very careful in the adjustments.”
Asked by chair, Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness, if the Budget is 99 per cent done, Noonan joked: “Ah there’s bits and bobs, you know…. some bells and whistles.”
Noonan also said that it is important for the government to have a “new blueprint for the economy” so as that the country does not go from “boom to bust, from boom to bust, from boom to bust”.”
He said: “During my time in politics we’ve seen good times, but we’ve seen an awful lot of bad times. Previously when the economy went into recession the solution was to get back to where we were before we collapsed. Now, that’s not a solution this time.”
He said that going back to where the country was before the economic collapse would result in “insolvent Ireland” and “broke banks”.
The Minister said that the property bubble “sucked the credit lines out of the economy and all the available credit went into development and speculation but the credit lines then weren’t there for the job creation, the manufacturing or services and so on”.
“What we are planning to do is that as we get out of the bailout at the end this year we’ll have a new blueprint for Ireland and it will have all the ideas that other Ministers are advocating,” Noonan added.
On the Budget he added: “While it’s still difficult, we know now that we can do it, we know now that the economy is stable again and growing”.
First published 12.29pm
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We should dispatch a Minister next year to Pyongyang for Paddys’s day. Maybe all of them! :)
Both countries run by lunatics !
Really good report. Very few people would have expected a connection with Ireland.
There’s always connections between countries FFS
I was in Pyongyang for a week back in September and our young “minder” didn’t even know where Ireland was so don’t assume the average joe gets to read those reports on the press site. There is no Internet but there is a special intranet which the students in the library can use to look up stuff about the “imperialist” USA. Have to say it was a bizarre week!
Don’t forget, plenty of members of the Workers’ Party, which had links to the USSR, are now high-profile members of the Labour Party.
de Rossa’s letter looking for £1 million is a good example:
http://irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/1986-letter-from-the-workers-party-to-the-communist-party-of-the-soviet-union-cpsu-looking-for-funds/
Sssush Ciaran .. some people don’t want to mention these things anymore :-/
Do ‘special activities’ include oifig an phoist and men in balaclava’s or a sponsored silence or what?
Reply from the CPSU your request for 1 million has been granted!!! “Will denomination’s of $100.00 dollar bills be OK ? See you in North Korea …have an empty suit case handy….good luck getting all those Worker Party , Democratic Left now Labour leaders & TD’s elected..see you at the next Lost Revolution Conference!!!!
Wonder what Michael D thought of getting congratulated by Kim Jong
In the 2009 St Patrick’s day greeting, Mr Kim (or his press secretary) seems to be under the impression that the former President was male: “Kim … wished the President … success in his work for the prosperity of Ireland.”
By 2010, the confusion seems to have mounted as Mr Kim opted not to identify Comrade MacAleese with any gender: “… the message wished the Irish President success …”
Great article. Having some diplomatic ties or exchanges between ourselves and countries like DPRK is certainly not something to be embarrassed about. You can’t moan about the insular and secretive nature of such states and in the same vein decry the fact that some degree of civility exists between the two, regardless of politics.
It is better to take many small steps in the right direction.. and all that
He’s no more a lunatic than George W. Bush
Well, both acted with impunity.. that’s where the similarities end, though.
They prob get a load of their info from President of the Korean Friendship Association, Alejandro Cao de Benos .. a Spaniard and total hack for the NK regime .. check out a documentary (I’m sure it’s on YouTube) called Friends of Kim .. you’ll see just how crazy he is
I was in North Korea at the end of November (must have been the last Paddy there before the Dear Leader crocked it!) and agree with Stephen above, most of the North Korean’s I spoke with hadn’t the first clue where Ireland was, never mind keeping a close eye on our current affairs.
Curiously we also did a tour to the museum that houses all the gifts from various nations to Kim Jong Il and there was some very fine Connemara marble on show courtesy of the Irish Workers Party’s trip there a few years back…nothing from Michael D yet, must be still in the post.
The DPRK was an interesting trip, would highly recommend it.
Yet again article of the week goes to Gav Reilly. Love reading his articles, he’s my favorite member of staff in the Journal.
I have heard the Koreans described as the Irish of the Orient – they’ve been under the yoke of a larger and more aggressive neighbour, plus they used to go abroad to work on building sites. While the north of both countries may be ruled by lunatics, it’s a lot easier to cross the border from Newry than Kaesong, and you won’t get thrown in prison for tuning into RTE.
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