NTMA controls failed to stop €5m fraud as C&AG report puts €42bn price tag on bank bailout

The report puts a €42bn final price tag on the banking crash bailout.

The State's National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has recovered half of the €5m it paid out to fraudsters in error last year and said efforts continue to recover the remaining amount.

Last July, the NTMA received a fraudulent request for payment of €5m from a third party designed and timed to pass as a legitimate request for funds from an existing ISIF investee company. Controls intended to prevent such fraudulent requests did not prevent the payment being made by the NTMA.

The NTMA reported the fraud to the relevant authorities, including An Garda Síochána, and took steps to recover the funds. According to the annual report from the Comptroller & Auditor General published this week, the NTMA has recovered €2.5m to date, and efforts to make further recoveries are ongoing.

Elsewhere, in what amounts to a final reckoning of Ireland's financial crash almost two decades ago, the C&AG's annual report calculates that the State invested €66.8bn in the banks between 2009 and 2014.

The State has now sold its last shares in AIB and Bank of Ireland. The crisis-era guarantee schemes were revoked last December, and Nama was dissolved on August 1. 

The only asset left was the State's 57% stake in PTSB, valued at €0.9bn, and the report says there is very limited scope for further returns. PTSB agreed in April to be sold to Austria's BAWAG Group for €1.6bn, netting the State €931m subject to final regulatory hurdles.

The report puts a €42bn final price tag on the banking crash bailout, equivalent to just over 18% of the €232.2bn national debt. Each percentage point on the State's borrowing costs adds around €420m a year to the cost of carrying it; at last year's average rate of 1.54%, that comes to almost €650m.

Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, merged in 2011 as IBRC, account for €39.1bn of the net cost. AIB cost a net €8.4bn, despite the sale of the State's final shares in June 2025, while PTSB accounts for €1.2bn on current valuations. Bank of Ireland was the only rescued lender to deliver a return, producing a €1.5bn surplus.

The C&AG report said the cost of servicing the national debt fell slightly to €3.12bn last year. However, the Department of Finance expects higher borrowing and interest rates to almost double general government interest spending to €6bn by 2030.

The report also shows the State increasingly borrowing from itself. Public bodies held €24.4bn in short-term State debt at the end of 2025, up from €19.3bn a year earlier, including €13.2bn from the Social Insurance Fund.

Meanwhile, sums owed to the State Claims Agency (SCA) by government bodies rose from €11.8m at the end of 2023 to €48.8m, with payments taking longer. The NTMA manages personal injury, including clinical negligence, and third-party property damage claims on behalf of the State and of certain ‘delegated’ State authorities through the agency.

The SCA paid out €513m in 2025 in settlements, awards and expenses, down 2% from €521m in 2024. It resolved 3,570 claims but still had 10,658 under management at year end, including 986 in mass actions. Separately, the Garda Síochána compensation scheme, set up in 2023, has received 883 claims, mostly legacy incidents that pre-date the scheme.

The SCA estimates it will cost €5.46bn to settle outstanding claims, up from €5.35bn. Clinical claims account for €4.43bn of that and general claims €1.03bn. Maternity cases alone make up about 60% of the clinical total, at €2.67bn. Another €1.11bn relates to interim and periodic payment orders.