Coveney looks on bright side of a losing bid

SIMON Coveney has described Dublin’s narrow loss to Paris for the European Banking Agency as ‘a pretty stunning result’.

Dublin tied on points with Paris on Monday, which led to the final decision being made by a draw from a hat, with Paris landing the agency.

Mr Coveney said Dublin had shown it could compete with the top European capitals despite acknowledging that there were no more agencies to compete for.

He told RTÉ: ‘I think it was a pretty stunning result yesterday. Nobody gave Ireland a chance of winning the European Banking Authority. Big cities like Paris and Frankfurt were obviously favourites. But over the last months we’ve been concentrating on a credible and competitive bid.’

Ireland had also been in the running for the European Medicines Agencies, but pulled out of that race to focus on bidding to host the European Banking Agency.

Mr Coveney said: ‘We had to make a strategic decisions in going after winning one of the bids. If we pushed for both we wouldn’t have been successful in either. So we strategically decided to go after the banking authority and that strategy paid off.’

When challenged that the strategy had ultimately failed he said: ‘The fact that Ireland almost won against the top capitals in Europe for the banking authority is a strong signal as to how the EU sees Ireland as an international hub for financial services.’