Ireland says bailout on track, focus on growth
(DUBLIN) - Ireland's bailout programme is meeting its targets, allowing the government to strengthen the focus on steering the eurozone nation out of recession, an official statement said on Thursday.
Officials from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank -- or Troika -- have been in Ireland for the past 10 days making their sixth quarterly assessment of the the country's bailout targets.
"We are pleased that we have met our targets, all measures have been implemented and the programme is on track," Ireland's Finance Minister Michael Noonan and Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin said in a joint statement.
"This successful outcome illustrates, once more, the ability and the commitment of the Irish State to implement a challenging programme effectively.
"As well as examining programme implementation over the past quarter over the course of this mission we have begun to examine measures to strengthen the focus on growth," they added.
Ireland had to seek an 85-billion-euro ($112-billion) rescue package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in 2010, when massive debt and deficit problems left it on the verge of collapse.
In a joint statement the EU, ECB and IMF said Ireland's implementation of its bailout programme continued to be "strong" with fiscal targets for 2011 met "with a healthy margin."
It noted however that "considerable challenges" remained.
"Economic growth is expected to remain modest in 2012, at around 0.5 percent. The benefits of continued competitiveness gains are limited by relatively low trading partner growth, while domestic demand continues to decline and the banking sector faces difficult market funding conditions."
The government said more than 100 actions had been completed under the terms of the bailout programme and that over 70 percent of the available funds have been accessed.
"Stability has been restored to the public finances, a range of structural reforms have been introduced and the financial sector is refocused on meeting the needs of the Irish economy," the ministers said.
They added that the first quarter of the year had seen "robust tax returns" but cautioned: "There remains a challenging road ahead ... We remain fully committed to reducing our (public) deficit to 3.0 percent of GDP by 2015 and we are confident that the 8.6 percent target for 2012 will be met."
Under EU rules, member states are supposed to keep their annual public deficit -- the shortfall of revenue to spending -- at no more than 3.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product.