Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 22 July 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach

Engagement with the NTMA on Matters Relating to its Operation

2:00 am

Mr. Nick Ashmore:

That was a proactive decision that was based on a change in the risk profile of the countries and sovereign issuers in the Middle East. We had a look at the Middle East in the context of what was emerging as a major conflagration of conflict, and that presented a risk to a number of those geographies. We took a decision that the most involved and the most adjacent countries were most at risk. We do not have any exposure to Iraq or Iran. We did have exposure to Egypt, Jordan and Israel, and we also have exposure to wider Middle East sovereign bonds in Saudi Arabia, Oman and that kind of thing. We categorise those risks into two levels, a high level and a lower level. We decided to divest the higher-risk three, Egypt, Jordan and Israel, and we are keeping the rest of the region on watch for further divestment if we think things are going to get worse. It was ultimately a risk-based decision that we took.

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