THE ARMY WAS almost called in to protect Ireland’s banks during the depths of the financial crisis, Agriculture and Defence Minister Simon Coveney has said.
Coveney told Newstalk the public didn’t realise how close to the edge the country was during the worst phase of the economic recession, which took hold in 2008.
He said Enda Kenny had been briefed that the army may need to be called in to protect banks in case they ran out of money.
“We were losing about 1,000 jobs a week in the economy, the country was bust.”
The Taoiseach was getting briefed by the Central Bank that actually he needed to have a fall-back position whereby the army may have to surround banks to protect them because we could literally run out of money. That is how close to the edge we were as a country because of political mismanagement in the past.
During the interview Coveney defended Kenny, saying he had led “from the floor” after years of “political mismanagement”.
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