A new European Central Bank liquidity facility to help Ireland’s struggling banks is not likely “for the moment”, Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan has said. In an interview with Market News International, he also said it was too soon to say when the State could return to international bond markets for funding instead of relying on its €85 billion EU-IMF rescue package, the Irish Times reported.

Financial regulator Matthew Elderfield says he expects legal challenges to fitness and probity tests from executives and directors who served in Irish banks before the financial collapse and who wish to serve in senior posts after January 2012, the Irish Times reported. Such tests would examine their individual performances before the crisis and could lead to them being removed from office and barred from serving as company directors.

Ireland's banking regulator said it will take years for investors to regain confidence in the country's banks, which in the meantime are likely to remain reliant on funding from central banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. "It's going to take a while before there's an Irish bond issue" from a bank, said Matthew Elderfield, the head of financial regulation at the Central Bank of Ireland, in an interview in London on Wednesday. "We may get some market interest in a couple years' time." Mr.

Eircom chief executive Paul Donovan told staff yesterday that he will not get a bonus of €4 million in 2012, as was reported by a Sunday newspaper last weekend, the Irish Times reported. But Mr Donovan made no comment on whether a two-year, voluntary pay cut of 10 per cent that he accepted in 2009 would be reversed in July, as was previously agreed with the company. The media report had angered many staff in Eircom, who only last week agreed to accept the terms of a wide-ranging restructuring plan aimed at reducing labour costs by €92 million.

The €24 billion bank recapitalisation plan is positive for Ireland's financial system but negative for its creditworthiness, credit rating agency Moody's said today, highlighting the possibility of another downgrade, the Irish Times reported. Moody's warning comes on the heels of Standard & Poor's one-notch downgrade of Irish debt and Fitch's flagging of another rating cut amid concerns about Ireland's ability to deal with one of the world's costliest bank bailouts.

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has warned that proposed changes to rent legislation would “significantly impact” on its ability to repay the debt it has issued, the Irish Times reported. The agency is “very concerned” about the impact any move to allow retrospective rent reviews could have on the value of its assets. Any such legislation would have a “dramatic reduction in the value of the income-producing assets transferred to Nama” because investment properties are valued on a multiple of their annual rent.

The Irish finance minister said on Friday the country’s debt burden was “sustainable” despite the government’s commitment to support the latest bank recapitalisation, the Financial Times reported. Michael Noonan said the €24bn ($34.1bn) the banks have been told to raise to provide an additional capital buffer “will not add very much to the imposition on the taxpayer”. Ireland’s bank bail out has already cost €46bn. If the state ends up funding this latest recapitalisation, it would lift the bill to €70bn or more than 40 per cent of 2009 Gross Domestic Product.

Ireland is on track to nationalize its banking sector after its government uncovered a €24 billion ($33.9 billion) capital shortfall in the latest round of "stress tests" of top banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. That gap will be plugged largely by taxpayers. The likely result will be that the government takes majority ownership of the country's six largest lenders, said Patrick Honohan, the governor of Ireland's central bank. Four of the six banks are already fully, or mostly, nationalized.

Anglo Irish Bank, the dying institution at the heart of Ireland's journey to near bankruptcy, confirmed Thursday an Irish-record 2010 net loss of euro17.7 billion ($25 billion) because of property development loans gone bad, the Associated Press reported. Anglo originally revealed its expected 2010 figures Feb. 8 and Thursday's audited figures contained only minor revisions. They eclipsed the previous record loss in Irish corporate history - the euro12.7 billion deficit that Anglo recorded in 2009.

Four times in the past two years, Irish authorities have tried to draw a line under their country's raging banking crisis. Now they are hoping the fifth time is the charm. Ireland's central bank on Thursday is expected to unveil the results of "stress tests" of four major lenders, The Wall Street Journal reported. Analysts expect the exams will show the banks need upward of €20 billion ($28 billion) in additional capital. That is likely to leave the Irish government as majority owner of virtually the entire banking sector.