Mr. Gary Tobin:

I can give the Deputy a couple more figures just to supplement what the Secretary General has said. The Central Bank has a minimum schedule of disposals on floating rate notes, FRNs. The schedule says that between 2014 and 2018 they would retire about €500 million, and then from 2019 to 2023 they would retire €1 billion. That was the original schedule but the actual sales are well ahead of that. By the end of March the Central Bank has disposed of €10.5 billion of the floating rate notes. This is €10.5 billion of the €25 billion. The timing of the trigger for disposal of the floating rate notes is completely at the discretion of the Central Bank.

At the moment, there is a low interest environment so the NTMA can pay these off with cheap money.