The Minister for Finance has said he sees scope for further reductions in the cost of Greece's debt.

Arriving at the Eurogroup finance ministers meeting in Brussels, Michael Noonan said this could be achieved through interest rate reductions and extending the repayment terms to make the debt affordable and sustainable.

But he said the question of debt cancellation for Greece was not the issue.

New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wants to renegotiate the terms of Greece's €240bn bailout with the EU and the International Monetary Fund. 

Mr Noonan said he did not believe today’s meeting of the Eurogroup would result in any decisions about the Greek situation.

The minister said everyone had to deal with the new Greek government as equals and he had full respect for them.

He said the meeting was being attended by the minister from the outgoing Greek government, but everybody wanted to hear from the minster in the new Syriza-led coalition.

Mr Noonan said he did not believe in unilateral action and thought negotiation was a better policy.

Syriza’s call for a debt conference was a sign that the new government wanted to negotiate on the issue, he added.

He said Ireland, Portugal and Spain had debt issues resolved through negotiations at Eurogroup and Ecofin and there was no reason why Greece could not do so again.

Mr Noonan said that the question of a debt writedown or cancellation did not really arise as government debt was rarely repaid - it was refinanced.

The key, he said, was to restructure the debt in such a way that servicing it became affordable.

Mr Noonan said that a combination of sustainability measures such as lengthening the terms of loans and reducing the interest rates would help make Greek debt more sustainable.

He said Ireland had engaged in a number of debt restructurings over the past three years.

These included the replacement of promissory notes with long-term bonds to pay the debt of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide, and the early repayment of IMF loans, replacing high-cost official loans with lower-cost market loans.

He said that most of Ireland’s debt had been restructured and was now affordable.

The market no longer had doubts about Ireland’s debt sustainability as a result of these restructurings and that was a key reason why we could borrow at just over 1% while equivalent Greek paper cost almost 9%.

He said Ireland would continue to seek further debt restructuring, and did not rule out retroactive recapitalisation for the surviving banks.

But Mr Noonan said other alternatives might provide a bigger return for the taxpayers.

Earlier, an executive board member of the European Central Bank said it could not  take part in any debt cut for Greece.

"It is not up to the ECB to decide whether Greece needs debt relief" since that was a political decision, Benoit Coeure told the business daily Handelsblatt.

"But it's absolutely clear that we cannot agree to a debt relief that includes Greek bonds that are located at the ECB," he said.

"That's impossible for legal reasons," he added. 

During the debt crisis, the ECB bought up huge amounts of Greek debt and still has some of it on its books.

Cutting that debt would be tantamount to so-called monetary financing - printing money to get a government out of debt - which is strictly forbidden under the ECB's own statutes. 

Mr Coeure also said European governments needed to implement reforms and consolidate their national budgets to create sustainable growth and jobs.