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Updated, 11:07
THE EU-IMF TROIKA has recommended that Ireland be given seven years more to repay its European loans under the bailout, it is reported.
Reuters reports that a proposal prepared by the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF is to be put to the Eurozone’s finance ministers when they meet in Dublin this weekend.
The proposals for an extension of the repayment dates for the European loans follows a formal request from Portugal, which would also be given a seven-year extension.
Ireland agreed with Portugal that the Portuguese would seek the extension while Ireland holds the EU presidency, in order to avoid the perception that Ireland was exploiting its chairmanship of European bodies for its own national benefit.
The extension would mark a significant concession for both Ireland and Portugal, and would improve the chances that each country would be able to borrow independently when their bailout funds run out.
Ireland’s European loans have an average maturity of 12.5 years, with the first repayments due in December 2015 and July 2016.
Reuters said the draft paper – prepared for the Eurogroup Working Group, which is comprised of the junior finance ministers for each of the 17 Eurozone countries – had examined the prospect of extending the repayment dates by 2.5, 5, 7, and 10 years.
The longer extensions were considered too risky for future EU budgets – given that the EFSF bailout fund would have to renew the loans it has taken out to lend to Ireland and Portugal – but that a seven-year extension struck a balance between the risks to Europe and the benefits to Ireland and Portugal.
This morning junior finance minister Brian Hayes said extending the repayment period would not make much difference “to the budgetary arithmetic” for the next few years, “but it will make a huge difference on our return to the markets” because it gave Ireland more “breathing space” in repaying existing debts.
“If the state looks less risky from a sovereign perspective, as we have been [...] if you get that perception out there, monies come back into Ireland,” he told RTE Radio’s Today with Pat Kenny.
Independent TD Stephen Donnelly said an extension to repayments would be “worth celebrating”, but commented that ratings agencies would see a rescheduling as a “partial default” and said interest rates, if not lowered, would leave Ireland ultimately paying more for its loans.
A final decision on extending the maturities for the loans will not be taken at this weekend’s meeting in Dublin, however – the meetings of eurozone and EU finance ministers are ‘informal’, unofficial ones and an official decision will be deferred until the next formal meeting in mid-May.
Bloomberg newswires this morning carry comments from a German government spokesman who said it was ‘too early’ to decide on extending maturities for Ireland and Portugal, and who said any change to the Irish repayment schedule would need the approval of the Bundestag to take effect.
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Why was my comment deleted Journal.ie?
The Ukraine has one of the highest rates of HIV and drug resistant TB in the world.
@icaniwont: yeahhhhh!!! Let’s not help people if they’re sick.
@icaniwont: it’s just Ukraine, not The Ukraine. Just FYI.
@Nomad: that is recognised as a human rights violation by the UN. You neglect to mention that having HIV is commonly used to deny residency rights, work permits and travel visas. It is a discriminatory practice that does little to prevent transmission but contributed massively to discrimination and stigma.
The best way to prevent transmission is to ensure that people get tested and are diagnosed and receive access to treatment to prevent onwards transmission. The best way to make this happen is to destigmatise the process and provide adequate access to treatment which represses viral load and prevents transmission. The worst way to do that is to continue perpetrate or replicate stigmatising practices. That is what all the best practice evidence shows and you will see that the countries that have such regulations don’t have have great detection rates and do not have lower transmission rates, they just discriminate unfairly against people because they have HIV which is not the end goal or desired result of any health policy.
The best way to prevent transmission is to be celebate. The second best way is to only have sex with one other who also only has sex with you.
@Tom Mullally: Is that your approach Father Mullally?
@Tom Mullally: Telling people to have less sex has never ever ever ever worked.
You can tell god-fearing evangelicals they’ll go to hell for all eternity for pre-marital sex, and still end up with eye-watering teen pregnancy rates.
The reason is obvious: access to services. It seems covid was the primary impetus to roll out the remote testing service, but even before the pandemic, it was incredibly difficult to get appointments even in Dublin (never mind outside Dublin). Many clinics didn’t even want to see you if you had no symptoms of anything, because they were so underresourced.
Yet you get the same tired response: be absinent and you’ll be grand. Because asking people not to have sex has always worked out so well historically…
PrEP is extremely effective in getting HIV transmission rates down, but it’s still only available in a limited number of venues with limited appointment availability.
Just a case of party mad and horniness after lockdowns.
@Jensen Bhroin: sounds very similar to covid cert that was welcomed
@SquintEastwood: ahhhhh nice work there. And the level of intimacy required to transmit covid is just the same as with HIV?
If we had meaningful access to PrEP rates would fall like a stone. 56 Dean St in London has done amazing work here. From a human perspective it’s just the right thing to do and being cold-hearted, a lifetime of PrEP is less than 1% of the cost of HIV treatments and interventions.
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