Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Finance further to Parliamentary Question 96 of 21 March 2013, if he will confirm that the State is paying a higher rate of interest on its borrowings from the International Monetary Fund than the rate of interest nationally applying to similarly-dated sovereign bonds; and the consideration that has been given by his Department and the National Treasury Management Agency to the early repayment of IMF loans through the issuance of sovereign debt. [16282/13]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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IMF funding forms part of our EU/IMF programme, and as such cannot be separated out from the funding received from our other programme partners. The possibility of early repayment of IMF loans has not been pursued as an early repayment of IMF funds would trigger automatic mandatory proportional repayments to the EFSF, EFSM, United Kingdom, Kingdom of Sweden and Kingdom of Denmark. In addition the debt market does not contemplate a scenario whereby the entire IMF debt stock would be replaced by government bonds in addition to the amounts already signalled to fund the Exchequer deficit and to replace existing redemptions. Such a prospect would be likely to cause significant upward movement in yields or fail to find sufficient investors to absorb such large concentrated debt issuance.

The question of early repayment of any one lender cannot be treated in isolation from other lenders and market expectations, and therefore does not arise as a realistic prospect.