IRELAND HAS COMPLETED the repayment of a £3.2 (€3.7) billion emergency loan granted by the UK government in the wake of the financial crisis, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has confirmed.
The loan, part of the European Union-International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout that the Irish government signed up to in 2010, was drawn down at various stages between 2011 and 2013.
“Ireland did not seek an early repayment of the UK bilateral loan,” the NTMA said in a statement. “As a fixed-rate loan, there were break costs associated with early repayment, which meant that it was not in Ireland’s economic interest to repay the loan early.”
Ireland received a total of nearly €68 billion from international sources as part of the bailout package: €45 billion through EU funds like the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM) including the £3.2 billion bilateral loan from Britain, and a further €22.5 billion from the IMF.
According to an NTMA statement, four of the six lenders have now been fully repaid. The Irish government repaid the last of its IMF debts in 2017.
However, €41 billion, owed to the EFSF and EFSM, remains outstanding. Those loans are due for repayment at some stage between 2041 and 2045.
Commenting on the repayment of the £3.2 billion loan, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said, “I welcome the completion of the repayment of the UK bilateral loan today. This repayment marks the completion of another step along our journey since exiting the EU-IMF financial assistance programme in December 2013”.
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