Greece's hard-left government has won a confidence vote in parliament ahead of critical EU talks on a temporary loan lifeline, an AFP tally showed.

A majority in the 300-seat chamber voted in favour of the government agenda, which includes renegotiating an unpopular EU-IMF bailout and addressing sweeping poverty and unemployment caused by five years of austerity cuts.

Meanwhile, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said he is pessimistic about finding a solution to the Greek debt crisis.

Speaking at the Oireachtas Finance Committee, Mr Noonan said Ireland has two red-line positions on the Greek issue - it will not support any write-down of debt, and it will not support any position that seeks to remove Greece from the Euro area.

Mr Noonan said he had not had any contact with the new Greek government, and has had no communication from either Athens or the Greek Embassy in Dublin regarding the plans of the government there. 

Mr Noonan said Ireland could not support a write-down of Greek debt as this would cause a loss to the balance sheets of all European governments, including Ireland, which had loaned money directly and indirectly to Greece.

He did say if debt was parked at zero interest the sum owed would still appear as an asset on the balance sheet of the lending government, even though the debtor government was not paying any interest to service the loan.

Mr Noonan said tomorrow’s emergency meeting of the Eurogroup is expected to last about five hours.

It will be preceded by a meeting f the Eurogroup working group of senior finance ministry officials, and it is expected that this will be the first place the ideas of the new Greek government will be put forward, before going into the meeting of finance ministers.

There it will be responded to firstly by the ECB and the European Commission and then by the Eurozone finance ministers.

He said that all he knew of the Greek proposals was what he had read in the news media and in  briefing notes. 

He said he thought there could be technical difficulties with the ECB in relation to Greek proposals for a bridging loan to allow space for negotiations to take place over the next few months.

He rejected claims by TD Richard Boyd Barrett that Ireland was siding with Germany and the ECB against Greece, saying he was supporting the national interest of Ireland.

He said a danger of associating with the Greek position was that any suggestion that Ireland’s sovereign debt was unsustainable could lead to a loss of market access, noting that Irish 10 year bonds carried a yield of 1.2%, while Greek ten year bonds had a yield of 10.25%.

He added that while it was fashionable to blame all of Greece's ills on the creditor countries, there was a serious problem in Greece of non-payment of taxes, and not just by the country's wealthy elite.

Greece has a 'Plan B' - minister

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said that if Greece failed to get a new debt agreement with the euro zone, it could always look elsewhere for help.

"What we want is a deal. But if there is no deal and if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow apart Europe, then we have the obligation to go to Plan B," he said on Greek television.

"Plan B is to get funding from another source," the minister explained. 

"It could the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could be China or other countries," he added. 

Kammenos is the leader of Independent Greeks, a nationalist anti-bailout party that is the junior coalition partner of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' radical left Syriza party. 

Greece is seeking a new debt agreement with the euro zone that will allow it to shake off much of the austerity that has been imposed by a European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout since 2010. 

The euro zone has shown no willingness to ease its requirement that Greece make deep budget cuts and economic reforms.

Meanwhile, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem has extended an olive branch to Athens a day ahead of a crucial meeting to discuss the stand-off over Greece's bailout, saying he was "extremely willing" to work for a solution.  

Mr Dijsselbloem, who is also the Dutch finance minister, also called on Greece to become financially independent "as soon as possible", as an emergency meeting loomed in Brussels.

"I am extremely willing, from inside the Eurogroup to work with Greece," to find a solution, Mr Dijsselbloem told Dutch television news channel RTL Z in a weekly discussion.

"The real work starts on Wednesday when the Eurogroup meets," he stressed.

Tomorrow’s meeting will be the first chance for Greek Finance Minister Yaris Varoufakis to set out to sceptical colleagues the radical new government's demands for a reduction in Greece's debt and an end to austerity.

Greece will plead its case for before finance ministers of the 19-country bloc for stop-gap financing with a view to clinching a reform deal that will not exacerbate poverty, to run from 1 September.

It is expected to do the same at an EU leaders' summit on Thursday.

However the European Union sees little chance of any final pact to resolve the debt standoff with the new government, a European Commission spokeswoman said.

But she also played down speculation on a possible Greek exit from the euro, a prospect that has spooked financial markets and governments around the world.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Junker yesterday said he did not expect any new deal to be reached this week and told Greece it "must not assume that the overall mood in Europe has changed so much that the euro zone will unconditionally adopt" Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' proposals.

Mr Dijsselbloem called on Greece to become "financially independent as soon as possible."
"You have to be able to pay interest, debts, to re-finance," he said.

"If you cannot do that, you remain dependent on the financing of others."

"Financing goes hand-in-hand with demands and conditions. That's exactly where the tensions lie" with regards to Greece, Mr Dijsselbloem said.