Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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247. To ask the Minister for Finance the current cash holdings in the National Treasury Management Agency; the current national debt and the amount that will be spent on serving the interest associated with this debt in 2015; and if a portion of the cash in the NTMA was used to buy back debt with a higher interest rate, what would be saved in interested spending in 2015. [31267/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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At end-June 2014 the Exchequer had €20.6 billion available in Exchequer cash and other short-term investments. The end-June position has benefitted from the fact that over 80 per cent of the €8 billion bond funding target for 2014 was completed in the first half of the year. Cash balances are expected to decrease significantly by year-end. 

The National Treasury Management Agency is responsible for borrowing on behalf of the Government and managing the National Debt in order to ensure liquidity for the Exchequer and to minimise the interest burden over the medium term. Decisions regarding the appropriate level of cash and related assets to be maintained must take account of various factors including the risk of a perception that the Exchequer might not be in a position to meet its obligations due to inadequate cash balances and that market funding rates for Ireland would therefore be higher than would otherwise be the case if the State had a healthy liquidity position.

The April 2014 Stability Programme Update (SPU) projected end-2014 General Government Debt at €204.4 billion.  

The April 2014 SPU also projected General Government interest expenditure in 2015 at €8.45 billion. The interest expenditure projection for 2015 will be further reviewed in the context of Budget 2015 in the autumn and will reflect developments in the interim as well as the outlook at that time, including for interest rates and funding requirements.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has carried out a number of transactions this year to buy-back and cancel debt. Most recently, on 2 July, the NTMA bought back and cancelled €2.0365 billion nominal of the 4.6% Treasury Bond 2016, as part of the buy-back/switch transaction which saw the nominal outstanding of the 3.9% Treasury Bond 2023 increase by €0.4795 billion. The projected net interest reduction from this transaction amounts to some €80 million in 2015.