The State is poised to settle the last remaining debts of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, finally closing off the liabilities of two failed lenders whose demise cost taxpayers €37.5 billion.
In a symbolic turning point 15 years after the September 2008 bank guarantee, the final slice of debt linked to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) liquidation is scheduled to be cancelled on Thursday. IBRC was the name given to Anglo and INBS when they were merged under State control after collapsing.
The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) transaction with the Central Bank will be the last act in a saga that began in the heat of the financial crisis when the then government issued €25 billion in promissory note to rescue Anglo and INBS. Such notes were an expensive form of IOUs, with steep interest costs weighing heavily as the State struggled during the international bailout to regain access to private debt markets.
After a diplomatic campaign that raised European Central Bank hackles, the Fine Gael-Labour coalition struck a 2013 deal to liquidate IBRC and replace promissory notes with long-term government bonds held by the Central Bank in Dublin. The aim was to cut costs, with bonds repaid over 40 years. But the ECB insisted on rapid paydown because of concerns the arrangement came too close to monetary financing, which is printing money to fund governments, illegal under EU law.
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Over ten years, most of the Central Bank bonds were sold to the NTMA, manager of the national debt, which paid for the purchases with cheaper private market debt and then cancelled the bonds. Bonds worth €24.5 billion were scrapped in that way, leaving the final €500 million to be extinguished.
The NTMA declined to comment. The Central Bank did not reply to a question.
