Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party)
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228. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide the latest available statistics comparing the general Government debt and gross national debt ratio of Ireland to European Union and Eurozone countries, and other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. [30400/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The information requested by the Deputy is available on Eurostat's and the OECD's websites. For convenience the requested information is reproduced in the following tables.

The latest available data on Eurostat's website is for 2014 and is presented in table 1. For comparative purposes with the OECD's data, the 2013 ratio is also shown. The OECD's website is not fully populated with data for 2014, hence the general government debt ratio for 2013 is included in table 2.

Gross debt according to the Maastricht criterion (basis for Eurostat's data) differs from the System of National Accounts (SNA) based general government gross financial liabilities concept of the OECD in essentially two respects.First, gross debt according to the Maastricht criterion does not include, in the terminology of the SNA, trade credits and advances. Second, there is a difference in valuation methodology in that government bonds are to be valued at nominal values according to the Maastricht definition, but at market value or at issue price plus accrued interest according to SNA rules.

Table 1 - General Government Debt (% GDP) for EU Member States

Table 2 - General Government Debt (% GDP) for OECD countries