16% of tax take to service Irish debt in 2010

IRELAND will spend €5.2 billion – 16% of all tax collected – on servicing a record national debt of €116 billion in 2010, as the country pays interest rates of almost 6% to fund Government spending.

Servicing the national debt will eat up almost every euro collected in Corporation Tax this year and next, according to estimates by Goodbody Stockbrokers.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) this week raised an extra €6 billion on international bond markets with the issue of a 10 year bond paying 5.93% a year, a massive 2.48 percentage points greater than similar debt raised by Germany.