FORMER MINISTER for finance Brian Lenihan has been accused by Minister for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton of trying to evade his responsibility for the way the EU-IMF bailout happened.
She was responding to Mr Lenihan's claim in Saturday's Irish Timesthat the European Central Bank forced Ireland into taking the bailout after briefing against this country.
“I think Brian Lenihan is trying to absolve himself but I don’t think he is going to fool anybody,” said Ms Creighton.
“We never heard this from him when he was in government or indeed since he has gone into Opposition. He has participated in Dáil debates on a number of occasions and he didn’t say this because he would have been laughed out of court,” added the Minister.
She said that if Mr Lenihan was to be believed, he must have been a very poor negotiator when he was representing Ireland at EU level.
“Since going into Government we have got the EU-IMF to agree that the sale of State assets may be used for job creation purposes and we got an agreement in principle on a reduction in the interest rate paid by Ireland on the bailout.
“We also got them to agree to a reversal of the cut in the minimum wage even though Brian Lenihan had claimed that this would not be permitted by the EU,” she said.
In an interview with Irish Times economics editor Dan O’Brien, Mr Lenihan criticised some of the 17 members of the governing board of the ECB for the “damaging” manner in which they had briefed some media about Ireland.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said yesterday the whole episode had left the current Government with a particular legacy that was “challenging, to put it mildly”.
“I think that Brian Lenihan has given some of his version of those events. I don’t know exactly what happened at those discussions, but clearly there is a lot more that we need to find out,” added Mr Kenny.
He said the Oireachtas was powerless at the moment to inquire into the events in question due to the failure of the last government to respond to the consequences of Abbeylara judgment.