Michael Noonan accused of being “ignorant” over remarks about Greece

Oh Michael Noonan, will you ever learn? The Minister for Finance has put his foot in it yet again by making some slightly offensive and “ignorant” remarks about the current crisis in Greece.

This is about the third time that Mr Noonan has outraged the public with his comments since the year began. Michael? It would probably be a good idea if you started using that old trick – you know the one where you think before you speak?

Anyway, The Irish Daily Mirror reports that the Minister for Finance has been branded as “ignorant” after he stated yesterday that the only things linking Ireland and Greece are “holidays” and “feta cheese.” Nice one. We bet there are a lot of Greek people who are overjoyed with those stereotypes.

Speaking as a caretaker Government was formed in the troubled country yesterday, Mr Noonan told an audience in Dublin that Ireland was not headed towards a contagion from Greece.

“Apart from holidaying on its islands, I think most Irish people don’t have a lot of connections with Greece. If you go into the shops here, apart from feta cheese, how many Greek items do you put in your basket?” he asked.

“For big, knock-on effects you need to have strong economic connections. And we don’t have any really,” he added.

However, Mr Noonan has been accused of being “ignorant” to the impact that Greece could have if it does make a swift exit from the Eurozone.

Straight after the Minister for Finance made his comments, Twitter went into overdrive with various users tweeting that if Mr Noonan believed a Greek exit from the Eurozone wouldn’t affect Ireland, he was “more economically ignorant than thought.”

Mr Noonan said that despite Greece’s current troubles, there was “no pressure” on the country to leave the Eurozone.

A second Greek election has been called for June 17, but Greeks have already started to pull their money from the country’s banks in a bid to save their savings if the country does decide to leave the Eurozone.