Most Irish welcome EU-IMF bailout: poll

18 December 2010 - 07H44

A protester holds a European flag bearing a swastika in the centre of it, as he demonstrates outside the Irish Parliament in Dublin. A majority of Irish people welcome a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout but believe the country has surrendered its sovereignty, according to an opinion poll published Saturday

AFP - A majority of Irish people welcome a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout but believe the country has surrendered its sovereignty, according to an opinion poll published Saturday.

The survey comes after the debt-ridden country's parliament approved by 81 to 75 votes the 85-billion-euro (112-billion-dollar) EU-IMF rescue plan aimed at solving Ireland's economic crisis.

Asked by Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI pollsters if they welcomed the bailout, 51 percent said they did while 37 percent said they did not.

Fifty-six percent of the 1,000 people polled between Monday and Tuesday said Ireland had surrendered its sovereignty by accepting the bailout, while 33 percent said it had not and 11 per cent had no opinion.

Voters who back Prime Minister Brian Cowen's Fianna Fail party are most supportive of the bailout and a majority of them do not believe that Irish sovereignty had been surrendered in the process.

Attitudes to the EU appear to have changed only marginally, with 69 percent of those polled saying it was better to be part of the European Union, down only two percent from 2009.

Rocked by bank bailouts, a property market meltdown and recession-ravaged tax revenues, Ireland has unveiled austerity plans to slash a huge deficit and save 15 billion euros by 2014.