Lenihan ‘urged’ to use pension fund to ease debt

FINANCE minister Brian Lenihan has been urged by some senior advisersto allow the country’s €24 billion state pension fund to buy Irish Government bonds to support demand, an Irish official said yesterday.

The senior official, who declined to be named but is familiar with financial policy discussions in the Government, stressed that no decision to take such action had been made.

A spokesman for the Department of Finance, contacted by Reuters, said: “There are no proposals to do this.”