Ireland's finance minister, Michael Noonan, is in the U.S. this week working to pump up Ireland's image while at the same time working to lure more U.s. investment for the deeply troubled Irish economy.
Noonan arrived Sunday and will stay until Thursday, in that time making stops in both New York and Washington.
Noonan was at the New York Exchange on Tuesday and earlier, in an interview given the CBS television network, was afforded the luxury of talking about a European Union member nation that is in even worse financial shape than Ireland.
Noonan told CBS that he was confident that European authorities would find resolution to the Greek debt crisis that wouldn't be classed as a default.
"A satisfactory resolution will be brought about, which will not be a credit event. But Ireland will be watching very closely," Noonan said in the interview.
Noonan said that the Irish government did not want a solution for Greece to amount to a "credit event" that could have a "contagion effect for Ireland."
"We're totally different to Greece. We have our bank restructuring in place, we have our fiscal programs in place," Noonan asserted.
While he has no public meetings scheduled, Noonan is lined up to attend a series of meetings, as many as 15, with investors set up by the National Treasury Management Agency and the Central Bank.
Noonan is expected to meet investors who may be interested in acquiring the $10 billion U.S. loan book of the now nationalized Anglo Irish Bank. A Department for Finance spokesman said the meetings were "commercially sensitive" but could no give any further details.
In Washington, Noonan an will meet International Monetary Fund officials to review the implementation of Ireland's EU-IMF bailout deal. He will also meet representatives of the World Bank.
Negotiations on the interest rate on the EU-IMF loans will not on the agenda for the Washington talks, the department spokesman said.
