Noonan claims to have put strong case on reducing bailout cost

The Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said he will meet with senior officials from the IMF before beginning political talks on reducing the cost of the bank bailout.

Mr Noonan met with the ECB chief Mario Draghi yesterday following talks on the matter with the European Economic Commissioner Olli Rehn.

He has described the talks as a "medium term" set of negotiations and said he stated Ireland's case "strongly".

But Minister Noonan said the next stage is getting agreement from all member states.

Mr Noonan said: "Now that I have met Commissioner Rehn and Mr Draghi, I need to contact the people in the IMF and then we will go on to making political approaches.

"Because at the end of the day, if anything succeeds in being done it will be a decision of the whole 27 members of the European Union."