Dow Jones Newswires
FRANKFURT -- Now is the time for European Union authorities and the Irish government to take decisive action to shore
up the country's banking crisis, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said Friday.
"We're now at the point where decisions have to be taken, where the Irish government is carefully doing the moves that
it has to do," Papaconstantinou said at a banking conference.
Papaconstantinou wouldn't speculate on how long it will take Ireland and the EU to finalize a bailout, and he stressed
that Ireland's current crisis, prompted by losses in its banking sector, is different to that of Greece last spring,
which stemmed from towering sovereign debt.
He also said that a bailout for Irish banks could help keep the government from fiscal ruin later on.
"Private debt has a nasty habit of finally being assumed by the government," in a time of crisis, Papaconstantinou
said.
---By Patrick McGroarty, Dow Jones Newswires; +49 171 97 48 903; patrick.mcgroarty@dowjones.com
