The State owes about €40,500 per person in Ireland, according to a new report from the Department of Finance on public debt, a figure that it notes is high relative to other advanced economies.
The debt of €218 billion equates to 68 per cent of gross national income, a measure of economic activity that strips out the distorting effect of the multinational sector.
The Department of Finance expects that this will fall to 63.4 per cent this year and 60.7 per cent by the end of next year. The decline in per-capita debt would be more modest under those projections, falling to €39,000 by the end of 2026.
Although this has come down from a high seen during the pandemic, this is due largely to growth in the economy, which, along with booming corporation tax receipts, led to budgetary surpluses.
RM Block
The report says it is “crystal clear” that these surpluses have been “entirely due” to the sevenfold increase in corporation tax over the past decade.
The prospect of EU-US trade frictions “shines a light on how exposed the Irish economy is” to a small subset of sectors, it argues.
In the longer term, structural changes will have “important fiscal consequences”, it says, including “adverse consequences for the evolution of public debt”.
The absolute amount owed has increased since the start of the pandemic, when it was €203 billion.
At its Covid-era peak, when the State borrowed to rush cash into the economy, it peaked at €236 billion. Officials in the Department of Finance say this was a successful effort to limit long-term scarring of the economy, arguing it was a “price worth paying”.
The department has also warned that with about a third of the debt set to be repaid in the next decade, the cost of servicing the State’s borrowings is set to rise.
This is because as the debt matures, the State is likely to roll over some or all of it with new borrowing, which will be at higher interest rates given the increases in this area in recent years.
Structural factors in the economy also mean that the debt-to-income ratio could become less favourable. In recent years, as income growth exceeded the interest rate on public debt, this declined.
However, the department has warned that shifting demographics, as the age profile of the population rises, bringing with it higher health and social protection costs, may “materially change” this dynamic by adversely affecting the interest rate and growth rate. It also cited the likely impact of costs associated with decarbonisation, digitalisation and deglobalisation.
In general, the report outlines that public debt levels are elevated across advanced economies such as Ireland, and within the euro zone, the debt-to-income ratio is higher than before the pandemic in two-thirds of member states.
Advanced economies also continue to run relatively large deficits, with the scale of borrowing they employ putting global sovereign borrowing markets under pressure.
