The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has today (Friday) completed the repayment of Ireland’s bilateral loan from the UK.
As part of the EU/IMF programme of financial assistance, Ireland borrowed £3.23 billion from the UK under a bilateral loan agreement. This loan was disbursed in eight equal tranches of £403 million over the period October 2011 to September 2013. Each tranche was repayable 7.5 years after disbursement and the final tranche was repaid today.
Commenting on the repayment of the loan, the Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe T.D. 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’.
Four of the six Programme lenders have now been fully repaid. Ireland made early repayments to the IMF of c. €18 billion over the period December 2014 to March 2015. The remainder of the IMF loan facility of c. €4.5 billion was also repaid early, in December 2017. In addition, Ireland made full early repayments of loans from Sweden (€0.6 billion) and Denmark (€0.4 billion) in December 2017.
Ireland did not seek an early repayment of the UK bilateral loan. 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.
The outstanding balance on Ireland’s remaining Programme funding from the two funding facilities – the EFSF and EFSM – is €18.4bn and €22.5bn respectively.
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