Listening to the recording of Dr Terry McDonough of NUIG, speaking in Galway on Feb 12th, it's obvious that the proclaimed €20bn bond 'savings' over the next ten years is a fallacy - we don't now have to issue those bonds only because we've already issued them!
Equally obvious, the equally proclaimed near-€1bn annual interest 'savings' is also false; in the first instance the actual interest we're paying to the ECB remains the same, at just under 1%; since we were paying the bulk of the interest in the original Promissory Notes to ourselves, albeit in a roundabout fashion, and since we are now also paying the interest on the new bonds to ourselves (for the moment anyway, as long as the Irish Central Bank holds those bonds), everything else is just an accounting exercise, a book savings.
In fact, however, and this was brought up by Terry McDonough during his discourse, this deal is going to cost us over the next couple of years. In 2013 there are the outstanding bonds to be paid to the IBRC bondholders, in 2014 there will be the wind-up costs, the legal fees and redundancies etc.
Below I have produced a table of the remaining IBRC bonds. My question, one I'd like to see some TD take up by way of Parliamentary Question to Michael Noonan (and no, I don't know the answer) - how many of those bonds will be paid, how much on each bond, and when? Scroll down to the bottom, see the total - over €4bn still outstanding.
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