our doubts about that. would you really refuse to help a country that does not fulfil the reform requirements? draghi : of course. if a country does not adhere to what has been agreed, we will not resume the programme. we have announced that we will suspend operations once a programme country is under review. we will then ask the international monetary fund and the european commission to assess whether the country is keeping the conditions of the agreement, and only after a positive assessment will we resume operations. spiegel : one only needs to consider the example of greece currently to get an idea of how credible such statements are. the government in athens repeatedly broke their commitments to the troika ( made up of the imf, ecb and european commission ) and yet they are now about to receive the next tranche of financial assistance anyway. draghi : that is not an appropriate comparison. greece will not be considered at all for our programme because it is targeted exclusively at countries that finance themselves, now as before, on the capital market. this is something completely different. spiegel : many people are nevertheless concerned that the ecb wants to take a vast amount of high - risk government bonds from southern europe onto its balance sheet. you already have on your books around €200 billion in securities from countries such as portugal and ireland. will it be the taxpayer who ultimately has to jump in if the countries cannot service their debt? draghi : i do not anticipate this ; quite the opposite. so far we have actually made a profit on our bond purchases, which has gone to the national central banks, in turn profiting the governments and taxpayers. spiegel : can you guarantee it will stay this way? draghi : one thing is clear : if the governments in southern europe continue with the successful implementation of policy reforms seen in the last few months, german taxpayers will make a profit from our purchases. there is no better protection against the euro crisis than successful structural reforms in southern europe. bis central bankers ’ speeches spiegel : this can also be expressed in a different way : your balance sheet is dependent upon political developments in madrid, rome and lisbon. do you think it is wise for a central bank to make itself dependent on governments in this way? draghi : we are not making ourselves dependent, quite the opposite. when the crisis escalated in early summer, the ecb had three options : first, do nothing, allowing the crisis to get worse and worse with greater

john hurley : recent economic developments in ireland and the outlook for the economy opening statement by mr john hurley, governor of the central bank and financial services authority of ireland, at the presentation of the annual report 2007, dublin, 10 july 2008. * * * you are all very welcome to this press briefing to mark the publication of the annual report of the central bank and financial services authority of ireland. i will briefly introduce my colleagues who join me today. tony grimes, our director general, deputy director general brian halpin, and tom o ’ connell, assistant director general, economics. the annual report describes in detail our activities in 2007, which proved to be a challenging year for the bank, both in terms of our domestic and our euro area responsibilities. in my statement today, i will begin by reviewing current developments in the irish economy. we have seen a substantial adjustment in the domestic housing market, international financial market turbulence and, more recently, the effects of higher oil and food prices. this has led to a greater - than - anticipated slowdown in growth and higher - than - expected inflation. notwithstanding the challenging short - term outlook, we continue to believe that the mediumterm outlook is favourable and that growth should gradually recover and inflation moderate. however, such an outcome is not guaranteed and will require concerted action. current developments in the irish economy the latest cso national accounts data, which were released after the annual report was finalised, indicate that growth in the domestic economy remained robust in 2007 with real gdp and gnp increasing by 6. 0 per cent and 4. 1 per cent respectively, in line with average output growth over the previous five years. while the performance of the irish economy was strong in 2007 as a whole, there was a significant moderation in growth as the year progressed. this slowdown has accelerated considerably this year. while the emergence of a slowdown in the economy was not unanticipated, the loss of momentum has been greater than expected this year. this has arisen from a sharper than expected adjustment in the housing sector alongside a deterioration in the international environment. growth prospects for the next 18 months or so are now significantly less favourable and we will be revising our forecasts to reflect this. overall, it seems likely that both gnp and gdp growth will remain positive this year, albeit significantly less than 1 per cent. although some improvement is in prospect, growth is likely to remain below potential in 2009 at about 2 per cent. the down