Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has said a decision has to be taken in a matter of weeks on the future of Anglo Irish Bank.
Speaking before his departure for Brussels earlier this morning, he said the Government could not make a decision overnight, and that the issue would be discussed with European authorities.
Mr Lenihan is in Brussels for a meeting of EU finance ministers, but also met EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia. They had been expected to discuss Anglo. 'It was a constructive meeting and the work is proceeding rapidly,' said a spokeswoman for Almunia.
Anglo made last-ditch plea to BoI
The Minister said management at the bank had put forward the case that if the bank were allowed to engage in lending, it might further reduce the cost to the taxpayer. He said the Government and the European authorities were looking at that .
Mr Lenihan added that he was concerned at reports over the weekend that public opinion believed Anglo would bankrupt the country. This is simply not the case, he said, adding that the costs were manageable.
The Minister named December 7 as the date of the Budget, saying it would not just be about the public finances, but would also contain measures to boost confidence in the economy.
On his own health, he said he had completed courses in chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the end of June, adding that the treatment had stabilised the cancer for the present. Mr Lenihan said he was in a good position to get on with the important decisions that have to be taken in the next few months.
Shift away from split option?
The political soundings on Anglo Irish Bank here appear to have shifted with the EU close to deciding on which of a series of options on the future of the bank it is prepared to accept.
The option originally favoured by Government involved splitting what is left of the bank, after the NAMA transfer process, into a good bank serving industry and a bad bank. The latter would recover whatever money it could remaining non-performing loans. The second option was a wind down over a decade or more.
Recently the Green Party decided the split option would ultimately be the more expensive and said it favoured a wind down but over a quicker time frame.
Some experts said that could exacerbate losses to the state, already pegged at €25 billion because of the need to sell on loans more quickly.
Yesterday Anglo's chief executive Mike Aynsley told the Sunday Business Post newspaper it would be wrong not to keep part of the bank open. He was also quoted as saying that it did not look as if splitting the bank was going to happen.
