DUBLIN (AP) — Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan says Ireland’s banks will be pruned down, merged or sold as part of a massive EU-IMF bailout taking shape.
Lenihan spoke Monday after Ireland requested, and other EU financial chiefs accepted, a loan to back up Ireland’s debt-crippled banks. Lenihan says the loan won’t exceed 100 billion ($137 billion).
In Brussels, European Union monetary commissioner Olli Rehn says the aid negotiations with Dublin can reach a conclusion by the end of November.
Lenihan says Ireland “isn’t bust” because it has its own cash reserves and plans to tap the EU-IMF fund only as “a last resort.”
He says he hopes Ireland can emulate South Korea, which got an IMF bailout in 1997 and returned to borrowing from open markets a year later.
