Bailout burden - EU project is at risk

CONVINCING other EU states that the beleaguered Irish people can’t afford to pay penal interest rates on a multi-billion euro bailout will not be an easy task.

But it must be the key objective of the Government’s campaign which intensifies this week.

Clearly, the Fianna Fáil-led administration signed up to a deal which the taxpayer cannot sustain. So, when Finance Minister Michael Noonan and Taoiseach Enda Kenny meet their European counterparts, they must hammer home the European-wide reverberations of Ireland’s crisis.

While greedy Irish bankers are chiefly to blame, speculative European investors are also involved and must be prepared to share part of the bailout burden. Otherwise, the EU house of cards could collapse.

In what promises to be a defining phase in Ireland’s relationship with Europe there can no question of giving way on the vital issue of this country’s 12.5% rate of corporation tax.

Put in the starkest terms, that would be akin to committing economic suicide.