Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 November 2012

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 4 - National Pensions Reserve Fund
Chapter 25 - Accounts of the National Treasury Management Agency
National Treasury Management Agency - Financial Statements 2011
National Pensions Reserve Fund Commission - Financial Statements 2011

12:20 pm

Mr. John Corrigan:

I imagine the key requirement would be that the economic value of whatever instrument might replace the existing promissory notes would be equivalent in value to the promissory notes. It should be possible to slice and dice that from a cashflow point of view. I would make one qualification to that statement: the general Government balance, which is the measure of the budgetary deficit or surplus, operates on an accrual basis under EUROSTAT rules rather than the old cash-in, cash-out system, and there might be elements of the accrual that would box us in in terms of how we might slice and dice that in order to get the result we want.