The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has been the subject of some unfortunate headlines in recent days, following the payment of some €5 million to a bogus account from one of its subsidiaries, the Irish Strategic Investment Fund. It goes without saying that the decisions and systems which allowed this to happen must be investigated and all efforts made to get the money back. There is a message here, too, for the public about the increasing sophistication of financial scams.
The revelation came as the NTMA published its 2024 annual report and its headline results for the first half of this year. Here, the news is broadly positive. While Ireland’s national debt is still high in cash terms – at around €218 billion at the end of last year – it has fallen as a share of national income. Also, the cost of servicing the debt remains at a relatively modest €3.2 billion each year and is unlikely to increase much in the near future.
This reflects a limited amount of fund-raising by the State in recent years due to the strong state of the public finances and also the fact that much of the debt is locked in for a significant period of time at fixed interest rates. So far in 2025, the NTMA has issued €5.25 billion in new borrowings – up to recently the running total at this stage of the year would typically have been twice that amount.
The NTMA deserves credit for its management of the national finances and particularly for locking in as much as possible of State borrowings during the period of exceptionally low international interest rates.
RM Block
It also has €30 billion in cash reserves to call on, enough to act as a safeguard if trouble hits. This cash could help the State through a temporary period of difficulties. However, as we saw after 2008, structural changes in the public finances –in particular permanent alterations in tax trends – still require money to be found elsewhere. Here, the obvious risk for Ireland is a fall-off in corporate tax revenues.
The strength of the public finances and the cash pile in the NTMA coffers give Ireland time to reduce its exposure to this risk. But it does not remove it.
