LetÕs clear our national debt by checking down back of the couch

Date Published: {J}

So now we know there are two ways to solve our debt crisis – one is to put the issue to a referendum like the Greeks in the sure and certain knowledge that even the criminally insane will reject it. The second is to double-check whether we’re in crisis at all by checking for loose change down the back of the couch.

After all, we’ve already found €3.6 billion this week simply by sharpening the pencil and adding the sums to find that we’d paid the equivalent of the Tesco online shopping bill twice.

So it’s time to check the bottom of that handbag you last used for the Oyster Festival Ball to see if there’s either loose change or a raffle ticket for a prize you forgot to claim because you were queuing at the bar or the toilet.

Check the inside pockets on the suit you wore to the young fella’s Confirmation – you might find your own money or some of the cash that the happy lad gave you to mind and you forgot to give back to him.

Have a look down the side of the car seat because there’s always money there, and check your desk drawer at work in case you threw your coppers in there and forgot all about it.

Best of all, search your bedside locker for foreign currency from your last holiday outside the euro zone – that sort of money is invaluable in the current climate and might well be worth more now that it was when you came back from Kusadasi in the first place.

All of these scenarios are, of course, ludicrous – but none more ludicrous than the ‘accounting error’ which miscalculated our national debt by a staggering €3.6 billion.

And while that may be somewhat brushed off by the explanation that it amounts to just two per cent of our bill, it can equally be challenged as a multiple of what was required to keep our hospital wards open, our care assistants in employment and at least some of our emigrants at home.

The Department of Finance explained it all away by pointing out that the National Treasury Management Agency had made both the Department and the Central Statistics Office aware that there was a change in their relationship with the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) that has an impact on the accounts of the two entities.

It said that previously the NTMA had acted as agents for the HFA.

"The Department of Finance is responsible for the calculation of General Government Debt. The NTMA raised the issue (of potential double counting) with the Department of Finance on a number of occasions from as far back as autumn 2010," said a mandarin.

Since late 2010 the NTMA have loaned directly to the HFA and these loans appear as assets in the NTMA accounts and liabilities in the HFA accounts.

"The liabilities of the HFA are included in general Government debt; the corresponding assets of the NTMA have been included in the ‘liquid assets’ of the NTMA, which are also part general Government debt – effectively a double count.

"Removing the impact of this double count reduces the estimate of 2010 general Government debt by €3.6bn or 2.3% of GDP," our learned friend concludes.

So there you have it – clear as mud.

And yet, even though Daddy found a wad of notes down the back of the armchair….no kids, we’re still not going away on holidays this year because Daddy ran up a big bill at the bookies and they have first dibs on our new found non-poverty.

We will still face the same austerity measures as we were heading for before our stroke of good fortune – unless we follow the Greeks’ lead and put the issue to the people in a referendum.

 

After all it would give the Government the chance to throw in the Abbeylara question once again and, just as we did with all previous referendums, we would vote it through this time.

But there’d be no need for tallymen to test the water on the debt question because you’d be set for the first unanimous rejection in the history of democracy across the planet.

Unless of course you got the heads from the Department of Finance to check the numbers – in which case we might find that, yes, the referendum was approved once they found the extra 3.6 billion votes in those mislaid boxes from the islands.

And everything is well with the world after all.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.