Fate of promissory note money

During the recent European elections, Fine Gael candidates wouldn’t answer the following question: what will happen to the €300,000,000 the Central Bank gets when it sells the first of the promissory note sovereign bonds later this year. Will that money be destroyed?

In an interview on Matt Cooper’s Today FM programme, newly elected Fine Gael MEP, Brian Hayes, likewise wouldn’t give a straight reply to that question.

In the Dáil, responding to three separate parliamentary questions, Finance Minister Michael Noonan wouldn’t reply. “The Central Bank is independent in the exercise of its functions, and the management of its investment holdings is a matter for the bank itself. Neither I, nor the Department of Finance, have any role in those matters,” he said. Slightly bemusing, considering Noonan was one of the primary architects of the deal that gave birth to those notes.