So who is in actual charge here? The government are open target for criticism but what if the NTMA decide against Ireland paying down its debt early?
The NTMA is mandated to ensure our country is funded properly. It's sensible to let them decide how to do it. These bonds from memory carried a 5.5% or 5.7% interest rate. The NTMA these days is
borrowing 10 year bonds at 3.1%. Replacing these European bonds with new borrowing would halve the interest payments without eating into the cash available to the country.
But they have already got back loads of money from selling down their stakes in the banks and through asset disposals by nama. What did they do with that money?
Used it. You can't really say which euro went where, but in theory the money was used to help fund infrastructure projects and go into sovereign wealth funds, which you assume will deliver a return > the interest rate Ireland has to pay on its bonds. Given that the economy is growing at > our interest rates for debt, and seems to be capacity constrained, using money to pay to build new infrastructure, for example, seems a better bet than just paying down debt.
I'd have thought the national dept is all one big loan with payable interest rates. Does it matter if its the bailout or COVID, its the national dept being repaid? Are they referring to bailout as it sounds politically more acceptable to repay?
It's not one big loan, it's lots and lots of loans with different maturities and interest rates. This is specifically a loan that carried a relatively high interest rate (5.5% or more) compared to what we currently pay to borrow (closer to 3%).
You can read about the breakdown of Irish debt in the very detailed investor presentation the NTMA produces regularly.
The latest one from October. Page 38 onward.
Maybe they will now repay some of the more expensive bonds with the €8b?
I would bet so.
as of end Sept 2026, Ireland's gross national debt is €220bn. If the exchequer used all its available assets to pay off debt it would be €184bn.
It's considerably more favourable than that. There are numerous ways to calculate net debt, but page 35 of the NTMA document I link above gives a good breakdown. We hold about €122bn in financial assets. Now there's always a question about how marketable these are. But net debt from things you could lay your hand to and sell is probably <€140bn. Of course, asset prices move in a crunch. But generally, Ireland is very well positioned on debt.
I don't think countries have any real intention or ability to pay back their national debts, just try to keep up with the interest payments.
The difference between you or I and a country is, the country will never (presumably) die. €10bn borrowed in 2000 is worth €5.57bn today. By 2100 if inflation ran at a straight 2% a year from here, it would be worth €1.29bn in today's money. The interest bill in real terms will also erode, assuming there isn't a major interest rate shock upwards.
The interest rate is how debt markets tell governments if their borrowing level is sustainable. But generally speaking the idea is you borrow less than the growth rate of your economy / inflation and you can do it forever. The issue lately has been governments borrowing such that their debt to GDP keeps rising and rising.
That isn't a problem Ireland has (even using debt to GNI*) at present. Our net debt to GNI* is close to 40%. Gross government debt to GNI* is about 58%, vs debt to GDP of 104% for the UK, for example. Even Germany is higher than us, at 66%.
