Irish officials hope the levy charged to Irish banks for participating inthe Dublin government’s deposit guarantee scheme will meet European Commission concerns that the scheme is not in breach of competition rules.

John Hurley, governor of the Irish Central Bank in his first comments on the crisis, said: “The scheme will be arranged in such a way as to charge a commercial rate for the benefit of the state guarantee, and every effort will be made in the development of that scheme to try to deal with those competitive issues.”