Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 8 February 2012
40 Deputy John Paul Phelan asked the Minister for Finance who, or which organisation, gave the European bailout money to Ireland; if these entities are privately owned, publicly owned, or State-owned; the persons who sit on the boards and are shareholders of the organisation in question; and to whom are these organisations answerable. [6983/12]
View answerThe drawdowns Ireland received to date from European sources under the EU-IMF Programme for Support, have come from the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM), the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the bilateral loan agreement with the UK.
The European Financial Stability Facility is a company which was established in 2010 by the countries that share the euro and was incorporated in Luxembourg under Luxembourgish law on June 7 2010. The shareholders are the euro area Member States. The EFSF's objective is to preserve the financial stability of Europe's monetary union by providing temporary financial assistance to Euro Area Member States if needed.
The board of Directors of the EFSF comprises high level representatives from each of the 17 Euro Area Member States. The EFSF framework document as revised provides that a Member's representative to the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG) (or the alternate) shall be nominated to be the representative on the EFSF board. Accordingly, Ireland's representative on the EWG, who is a Second Secretary General in the Department of Finance, is Ireland's EFSF director. EFSF directors do not receive remuneration for this role. The European Commission and the European Central Bank each have observers on the EFSF board.
The European Financial Stability Mechanism was established under Council Regulation (EU) No 407/2010 dated 11 May 2010. The European Commission is empowered to contract borrowings on behalf of the European Union for the purpose of funding loans made under the EFSM (Article 2 of Council Regulation 407/2010). The borrower is the European Union. The Commission is the institution that manages the borrowing on behalf of the EU. The Commission's role in this respect is comparable to a government debt management agency (e.g. NTMA) contracting borrowing on behalf of the country.
In the case of the UK loans, these are provided and managed through the UK Treasury, a department of Government similar to our own Department of Finance.
