THE GOVERNMENT WILL use the last €5 billion in the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF) to help create employment although it will need approval from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Europe before doing so.
The Sunday Times reports today that the money will be used by the government to create as many as 80,000 jobs in Ireland. The paper cites government sources in reporting that the use of the money would be seen as more viable then the proposed sale of semi-state assets in the current weak market.
One source says that the view of the troika of IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank is that if you have money it should be spent rather than drawing on outside funding or money from selling off assets at the wrong-time.
The NPRF was launched ten-years-ago by the then Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy.
Its purpose was to build up assets which would part-finance the cost to the exchequer of social welfare and public service pensions from 2025 onward.
A total of €17.5 billion of it is being used as part of the €85 billion EU/IMF bailout that was agreed last November with €10 billion of that being used to recapitalise the banking sector in Ireland.
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