Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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89. To ask the Minister for Finance the size of the national debt over the past five years; the cost of servicing the debt in interest payments for the past five years and for 2014, 2015 and 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7404/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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A time series on the outstanding stock of national debt and the servicing of national debt is available in the Budgetary & Economic Statistics, published by my Department in late December. However, as general government debt expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product is the standard metric internationally for assessing debt levels, this is the more appropriate metric to look at and general government data sourced from Budget 2014 are provided below.

While the tables above show the Budget 2014 estimate of General Government debt for 2013, the Deputy will be aware that the National Treasury Management Agency completed the buyback, on the 17^th of December 2013, of €4.102 billion of a 4% Treasury bond due to mature on 15 January 2014. One of the impacts of this buyback was to reduce the estimated General Government Debt for 2013 to around 122% of GDP.