A few weeks ago I posted a link to a presentation put together by Spiegel Online showing the maturity profile of the debt of Ireland and other European sovereigns with high deficits. The exact nature of the calculations for Ireland were questioned at the time in the comments. Last week, I received an email from someone who clarified two points for me in relation to the Irish information in this presentation.
First, the €8.6 billion shown as Irish bonds due this year are almost all Treasury bills even though the chart is labelled “When Irish bonds are due”. Second, the Spiegel people selected “Republic of Ireland” as opposed to “Ireland Government Bond” when performing their Bloomberg search. This means that their numbers for future years include, for example, the Dublin Airport Authority and the Housing Finance Agency.