Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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Question 87: To ask the Minister for Finance if it is his intention to balance the national budget; and the year he estimates that this will happen. [22114/11]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to restoring order to the public finances and as an intermediate step, reducing the General Government deficit to less than 3% of GDP by 2015. The Programme for Government states that further reductions in the deficit will be required thereafter. However, the current budgetary projections contained in the Stability Programme Update, published in April, are only available out to 2015. Based on these projections, the Budget will not be in balance by 2015 but importantly will no longer be in excessive deficit. It is also important to note that a primary surplus - that is an excess of revenues over expenditure excluding debt interest - of 1.7% of GDP is forecast to emerge in 2014.