Written answers
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
Department of Finance
Government Deficit
Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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231. To ask the Minister for Finance the latest general Government debt and deficit projections between now and 2020, given the recently announced Exchequer update for 2015. [1234/16]
Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The most recent projections in relation to both government deficit and debt figures were included as part of the Budget 2016 publication and are displayed in the table below.
| 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deficit as % GDP | -2.1 | -1.2 | -0.5 | 0.2 | 1.0 | 1.8 | 2.5 |
| Debt as % GDP | 97.0 | 92.8 | 90.3 | 86.7 | 83.5 | 79.8 | 75.7 |
The impact of the 2015 Exchequer returns, which indicated that tax revenue was €3.3 billion ahead of expectation and expenditure was c.€270 million below the net estimates adopted by the Dáil (i.e. including the supplementary estimates), should be to improve the general government balance for 2015 by about 0.6% of GDP and bring it close to 1.5% of GDP overall. However, aside from tax revenue there are several other elements which impact the overall deficit figure. The first official estimates for 2015 general government balance and debt will be produced by the Central Statistics Office for the end March 2016 EDP transmission to Eurostat.
The improvement in the 2015 outturn will have a base effect and it will carry through to subsequent years. The deficit and debt projections for 2016 to 2021 will be updated in the stability programme update next April.
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