German chancellor Angela Merkel has promised to assist Taoiseach Enda Kenny in maintaining the State’s “impressive” reform progress and ensuring Irish people’s sacrifice is recognised in the coming years.
The German leader told Mr Kenny and a high-level Berlin audience yesterday afternoon that she was committed to helping Ireland boost job and income levels to pre-crisis levels. Though she declined to go into detail, Mr Kenny used a bilateral meeting to raise the State’s outstanding business of bank debt.
EU role ruled out
After their meeting, the Taoiseach ruled out a move to Brussels as president of the European Council, saying he had “more than enough” on his plate with a new Labour leader and Cabinet reshuffle looming. “My priority is clearly to lead our Government, to grow our economy and create jobs through the mandate we have,” he said.
Even if no concrete concessions emerged yesterday, the Fine Gael leader won over Dr Merkel to conceding in public that Ireland’s full economic recovery was not yet a given.
“Our task in the coming years is to show people in Ireland that the difficult path they took was worth it,” said Dr Merkel, adding that she “always found a good balance” working with Mr Kenny at EU levels, “even in Ireland’s most difficult hours”.
“If Ireland recovers as well as Enda Kenny says it will – and things have always happened as he said – then Germany will have to exert itself,” she told her Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) Wirtschaftsrat or economic council.
Speaking to reporters after their meeting, Mr Kenny said the German leader was aware of the fragile state of the Irish economy and that any further concessions or budgetary flexibility should be given back to taxpayers. “I mentioned that the challenge for most countries, particularly for Ireland, is to demonstrate to people that the sacrifices they made will pay dividends in their pocket,” he said.
While a push for additional fiscal flexibility such as Italy’s was “always of interest to Ireland”, he said it would not affect Ireland hitting its deficit target of 3 per cent of GDP in 2015 and zero in 2018.
Mr Kenny told the CDU council’s annual meeting that Ireland Inc’s pre-crisis success was ruined by lazy managers chasing easy profit. “[They] allowed costs and spending to run out of control, all camouflaged by a debt-financed property bubble, with assistance from loose rules and loose financial regulation – both at home and abroad.”
The State’s recovery was hard-won and thanks to the Irish people making huge sacrifices. “We didn’t sit back or do the minimum and avoid real reforms. We wanted to fix this . . . and be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
Part political address and part sales pitch, Mr Kenny told an audience of almost 3,000 that the State’s record, even in the bad times, showed investment in Ireland – political and business – returned dividends.
Can-do attitude
It was a message that pushed all the right buttons with the CDU economic council and its chairman, Prof Kurt Lauk. Ireland’s can-do attitude was, he told the audience, “perfectly in tune with the CDU economic council philosophy”.
Mr Kenny praised Ireland’s bilateral trade ties with Germany, worth almost €22 billion in goods and services, as well as Dr Merkel’s support for the new Strategic Banking Corporation.
He urged his audience to embrace a trade deal with the US, and push forward on common services and digital markets. The EU must work to put “more substance” behind growth measures, he said, and to keep Britain in the bloc.
