High-level EU talks on draft budget

Irish and EU officials yesterday held intense talks in Brussels on the Government’s draft budget ahead of today’s Cabinet meeting.

Senior European Commission experts scrutinised the main details of the spending cuts for next year to ensure it was in line with troika and EU demands to reduce the country’s deficit and ahead of the troika’s next visit to Dublin later this month.

The Government is ensuring details will not leak out this year, as it did for the past two years from Berlin, by introducing the budget on the 15th of the month — the date on which the draft would normally have to go to the European Commission.