Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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65. To ask the Minister for Finance in respect of the total general Government contingent liabilities and non-performing loans in European Union member states in 2013, as reported by EUROSTAT on 10 February 2015, if he will provide a breakdown for Ireland of the outstanding liabilities related to off-balance public-private partnerships liabilities of Government controlled entities classified outside general government and non-performing loans; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10672/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Enhanced Economic Governance package (the so-called "six pack" composed of five Regulations and one Directive) was adopted by the European Parliament and Council in November 2011. Among other statistical implications, this package includes some legal requirements which have implications on the collection/dissemination of fiscal data and statistics. In particular, under Council Directive 2011/85 of 8 November 2011, all Member States are required to regularly publish data on contingent liabilities and other indicators which may indicate potential impact on the general government deficit and/or debt.

Eurostat established a Task Force on the implications of the Directive on the collection and dissemination of fiscal data. The Task Force was conducted in co-operation with DG ECFIN and the practical implementation of individual requirements of the Directive relating to the reporting of fiscal data was set out. It was agreed by the TF members that all indicators required by the Directive would be published together by a national authority on a single dedicated national webpage or website.

My Department published this data on its website as Fiscal Data Contingent Liabilities 2013 on 30th December 2014.

Concurrent to this process the CSO transmit the data to Eurostat who in turn published it in their report on 10th February 2015. The data in the publication is collected by the CSO with the assistance of my department.

The Deputy should note that this data only contains data on liabilities and non-performing loans in line with the requirements of the directive. It does not include any data on related or counter parting assets.

A breakdown at sector level of the data requested by the Deputy is outlined in the aforementioned Department of Finance publication;

Providing a further breakdown of this data would be a matter for the CSO. As indicated in Eurostat's report, the stock of non-performing loans predominately relates to the inclusion of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) into the general government sector in 2011.

Please note that the Department of Finance publication includes the liabilities of the Central Bank. However Eurostat in their report excluded national central bank liabilities to enhance cross-country comparison.