New figures show that the Irish General Government Deficit is falling steadily. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) says the level fell to 7.6% or just over €12.4 billion last year.
The deficit for 2012 compares to the high of almost 31% or more than €48.2 billion in 2010 relating to the bank bailouts.
These Maastricht Returns are submitted by each Member State to Eurostat twice every year. Irish tables are compiled by the CSO with the forecast by the Department of Finance.
The figures show that the first official estimate for last year of 7.6% of GDP is well within the programme target of 8.6%. This shows a considerable improvement on the Budget 2013 underlying deficit forecast of 8.2%.
The deficit for this year is forecast at 7.4% of GDP and is broadly in line with the 7.5% projected at Budget time and within the programme target of 7.5%.
The 2012 estimate of general government debt is 117.6% of GDP which is very close to the end year forecast at budget time.
However the current estimate of government debt-to-GDP ratio for end-2013 at 123% is two percentage points higher than the Budget 2013 estimate. The Department of Finance says this is largely because of higher pre-funding for 2014 and 2015 in the early part of this year.
But it points out that the increase in the ratio does not reflect any deterioration in the fiscal position.
