Irish
Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan has said he expects the Irish Republic
to accept a “very substantial loan” as part of an EU-backed bail-out.
Mr
Honohan told RTE radio he expected the loan to amount to “tens of billions”
of euros.
The
final decision will be up to the Irish government, which has said it has not
agreed to a loan from Europe.
The
comments come as a team of international officials meet in Dublin for further talks on the debt crisis.
Representatives
from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the EU will
meet the Irish government, which says it has not even asked for aid.
Mr
Honohan said that any loan would be substantial.
“It’ll
be a large loan because the purpose of the amount to be advanced or to be made
available to be borrowed is to show that Ireland has sufficient firepower to
deal with any concerns of the market. That’s the purpose of it,” he told
RTE.
But
the Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, when asked about those comments said
merely that the governor was entitled to his view.
Mr
Cowen said he did not want to “pre-judge” the outcome of the talks.
An
EU handout would be seen as a big loss of face for the Republic – essentially
meaning that its survival and solvency were reliant on Brussels.
But
BBC business editor Robert Peston said that in terms of Irish resistance to a
bail-out, this was “game over”.
“The
Irish government could not conceivably go against the advice of its [eurozone]
partners and its central bank,” he said.
Were
it to do so, commercial customers of Irish banks would accelerate withdrawals
which would be devastating, he said.
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