Bondholders To Be Repaid 'To The Last Cent' Pledges Noonan

Finance Minister Michael Noonan says his comments in Washington last week about burning senior bondholders at Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide were "given a weighting they didn't actually deserve" because of the escalating debt crisis in Greece.

In a briefing with Irish-American journalists in New York on Friday, Mr Noonan said the government is committed to paying "to the last cent" everything that has been lent to the State or Irish banks.

"We are saying publicly that everything that has been given to us as a country, or has been given to us in our banking system, that we'll repay to the last cent," he said,

"And that's our commitment to the senior bondholders everywhere."

However, he said that in case of the recently merged Anglo and Irish Nationwide, there were "residual issues" Ireland would like to discuss given that the bank's deposit base had been moved to the main pillar banks.

"We are not going to make any kind of unilateral move," said Mr Noonan, "We are going to discuss these issues with the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank.

"And the discussions aren't imminent either. You know, this is something for the Autumn. So we are not even looking for meetings on these issues at the moment."

He said the issue had come up during an interview "in the context of what we're doing in restructuring the banks, and I want to put it back in context."

"I mean, it was reported accurately, but I want to give it the context I gave it in the initial interview," he said.

The comments by Mr Noonan that the government would seek to share the burden of debts at Anglo and Irish Nationwide with senior bondholders, sent ripples through a nervy financial community.

Mr Noonan attended an EU meeting in Luxemburg on Sunday, and it now looks like there is a July 11th deadline for finding a resolution for the Greek crisis.

"Ireland won't have a very strong voice in designing the solution, and our primary interest is to ensure that any solution arrived at doesn't damage us," he said.

He said Ireland was not Greece, but the international financial media tended to box us together.

Mr Noonan went on Bloomberg television to reiterate the point.

During an interview with presenter Margaret Brennan in New York, he expressed concern that Ireland could be engulfed by the Greek debt crisis.

"Ireland isn't Greece, we're structured differently. Our fear here is that there would be some knock-on effect which will adversely impact on Ireland."