Mr. Frank O'Connor:

There are quite a few questions there, I will try to deal with them in sequence.

On the outlook for rates, I commented earlier that based on ECB guidance official rates are not set to rise for a couple of years yet, until the ECB sees the inflation target rise towards 2%. We do caution about future interest rates. It is not a prediction, all it is saying is that given the stock of debt initially, post the legacy of the financial crisis and then with Covid-19, even though we are well placed to borrow, the stock of debt means that if there was to be a rise in interest rates we would see the debt-servicing costs rise. That is the point. I mentioned that not all of our debt will roll in one year because we have elongated it, so it would take quite a period of time. That is the cautionary tale and the Deputy is right, the costs of servicing the debt and interest rates are a huge factor as is the ECB bond-buying programme. Many years ago with debt at this level people would have expected the interest bill to be higher. In fact if one looks at the graph we included, back in 2014 it was expected that Ireland's debt-service costs would reach almost €10 billion and this year they are dropping below €4 billion.

Regarding some of the Deputy's other questions, on the matter of who holds our bonds if one looks at our last five syndications - these are the big transactions of €4 billion to €6 billion in size - one will see that approximately 80% or more is overseas with the remaining 10% to 15% being domestic buyers. It does depend on what bond is being issued at a particular point in time but it is very much that overseas piece. The Deputy is right that the ECB is a large buyer in the secondary market and have been since 2015 with the onset of quantitative easing. The ECB right now holds about 20% of Irish Government bonds and I can take her through any of those numbers in further detail if time allows.

On the question of windfall gains and paying down debt, we face a deficit this year. The projection is a general Government balance of €23 billion and a lower Exchequer borrowing requirement, so we are not paying down debt, we are adding to the debt and effectively this is fungible, to use the jargon, so the NAMA surplus of €2 billion that was paid over in June effectively lowered the amount we had to borrow in the market.

In essence, debt is not being paid down at the present time.