The National Treasury Management Agency sold bonds this morning at a 1.8 per cent yield, Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn announced in the Dáil.
“That’s less than the estimated 2 per cent,” he said of the €500 million loan over three months.
Mr Quinn gave the news in the Dáil as the Opposition criticised the Government’s actions to deal with unemployment, the cuts in rent supplement and in social welfare and the breach of caps on salaries to special advisors.
There had been sharp exchanges between the Minister and Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald before Mr Quinn made the announcement.
He had said previous Fine Gael labour coalition government left a budget surplus when it left office in 1997.
But Ms McDonald said the Government was out of touch in “singing your own praises because the ESRI said budget 2012 involved greater proportionate losses for those on low incomes than any of the previous austerity budget”.
She said unemployment was at nearly 15 per cent and “citizens have lost their homes because of the mean spirited changes you’ve introduced to rent supplements”.
She asked if the Government would “finally honour” the caps on salaries to political advisors.
But Mr Quinn retorted: “I will take no lecture from a party whose military wing visited two and a half decades of austerity on this island.”
He then announced the bond sale results and when Ms McDonald started to intervene as he spoke, the Minister said: “You can’t even accept good news, God love you,” adding “you’re really pathetic”.
