Taoiseach Enda Kenny has strongly denied that Ireland’s acceptance of the fiscal compact agreed by EU leaders last week will condemn the State to further years of austerity.
Mr Kenny also indicated that Ireland had not pressed the European Union to draft the text of the fiscal compact – which will impose tough new budgetary and deficit rules on euro zone countries - in a way that would avoid a Constitutional referendum in Ireland.
Speaking on RTÉ radio today, Mr Kenny pointed out that the fiscal compact, when ratified, would not affect Ireland for the next two years as the country's bailout programme with the EU and International Monetary Fund "supersedes the fiscal compact".
"We set out the reasons also why countries emerging from a programme like ours will continue to receive funding if that's necessary," he said.
Mr Kenny referred twice in the course of the interview to funding being available to programme countries which have emerged from bailouts, raising the prospect of possible contingency fund, or even a second programme, from 2014.
But a Government spokesman said later that the Taoiseach was stating the facts of what was contained in the fiscal compact text, including protections for "programme countries".
The Taoiseach, he said, was determined that the Government exited from the programme at the end of 2013 and there was "no desire" to be in a position to avail of additional funding.
In the interview, Mr Kenny said that in respect of the changes that would need to be made to reduce the Government deficit to 0.5 per cent of GDP, the EU Commission "would work with each country on an individual basis. They are matters of a very complex technical nature. It is not a one-size-fits-all."
He asserted: "Ireland signing up to this is not consigning itself to a programme of austerity for the future.
"Because we believe the major changes being made will allow us to [make] growth have the big impact on dealing with our problems in the future. The Governments' programme will always be focused on jobs," he said.
Mr Kenny, speaking on This Week, accepted that any measure agreed that had the possibility of requiring a change in the Constitution was potentially "challengeable" in the Courts.
However, when pressed in the interview on whether Ireland had insisted on the text being designed to obviate a referendum in Ireland, he said "not at all".
The Taoiseach emphasised again there would be no firesale of State assets.
However, he agreed that those considered suitable for disposal would need to be sold by the end of 2013, as that is when the bailout programme comes to an end.
If was put to him that if the assets were sold off after 2013 and the rules of the fiscal impact applied, revenues might have to be used for assets-disposal.
He said funding [from the Troika] would continue to be available for programme countries that emerged from a programme, as long as they observed the conditions.
This indicated that he was not ruling out the possibility of Ireland availing of some form of contingency or bailout funding from 2014.
He said New Era would make a list of non-essential State assets that could be disposed and that they would be sold at the best possible time, with a "substantial" proportion of the revenues being invested in job investment.
He would not specify what quantified "substantial". "Depending on scale of the sale, the result will be a substantial investment in jobs."
Mr Kenny said that the large number of departures from the public sector by the end of this month under the incentivised retirement deal would test the flexibility of the Cork Park agreement.
He also said the Government decision to close the Irish embassy to the Holy See was wholly unrelated to his criticism of the Vatican following the publication of the Cloyne Report.
"I have had lots of correspondence myself about this from people around the country. People assumed that this followed on the speech I made on the Cloyne report in the Dail.
"It was something to do with interference with religious practices or whatever. Nothing could be further from the truth," he said.