Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Question 27: To ask the Minister for Finance if he will confirm the dates and the amounts received and receivable from the sale of ordinary shares in the Bank of Ireland this year; the purposes to which these funds were applied; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31730/11]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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On 25 July 2011, the Minister for Finance announced that a group of investors had committed to buy up to €1.1 billion of the NPRF's shares in Bank of Ireland. This commitment reduced, from €1.9bn to €0.8bn (58% reduction), the potential maximum cost for the State to meet the bank's PCAR equity capital requirement. As a result of investment from other non-government sources, the total cost to the State (through the NPRF) from underwriting the bank's equity capital raise reduced from €0.8 billion to €0.2 billion (including net underwriting fees received by the NPRF of €0.05 billion). The actual amount sold by the NPRF to the investors was 10.5 billion Bank of Ireland shares at a price of 10c per share. The disposal of these shares took place in two tranches. The first disposal for €0.24 billion settled on 2 August 2011 with the second, and final, tranche for €0.81 billion settling on 17 October 2011.

The net proceeds from the disposals were transferred, on foot of a Ministerial Direction, from the NPRF to the Exchequer within 5 days of receipt from the investors.

The revenues of the State are not generally assigned to one particular area of expenditure. Receipts into the Exchequer from the sale of ordinary shares in the Bank of Ireland are, along with other sources of revenue such as tax revenue, non-tax revenue, other capital receipts, and borrowings under the Joint EU/IMF Programme of Financial Support, available to fund overall expenditure. The receipts from the sale of ordinary shares in the Bank of Ireland, because they were not retained within the NPRF, but were instead transferred to the Exchequer contribute to reducing the 2011 Exchequer deficit.