Finance Minister Michael Noonan has told the Dáil that the "double count" of €3.6 billion was "human error" on behalf of an official in the Department of Finance. He was responding to questions from Fianna Fail's Michael McGrath.
Deputy McGrath described the miscalculation of the national debt as ''a humiliating schoolboy error''. He said the NTMA also had questions to answer and called for an external investigation into the matter.
Minister Noonan said it was clear there had been a systems failure and said it was a very serious issue. He said the Secretary General of the Department of Finance had been asked to conduct a review into the matter.
He said the CSO had already informed Eurostat of the double count and the EU and IMF have also been informed. He added that Ireland was in no way better off following the discovery of the accountancy error.
PAC to discuss €3.6 billion accounting error
The Public Accounts Committee will hold a special session tomorrow to discuss the €3.6 billion error in the National Accounts that came to light yesterday. The correction has reduced the national debt by over 2% but will not have any impact on next month's Budget.
The accounting officer of the Department of Finance, Kevin Cardiff and senior officials from the CSO and the National Treasury Management Agency will be questioned tomorrow morning by the committee, which is anxious to get details of just how the error happened.
The Chairman of the Committee, John McGuinness, said that as well as dealing with the error, and on when it came to light, the committee will also examine the control failures that led to its happening.
Schaeuble plays down €55 billion accounting error
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble today downplayed an accounting error at a state-owned bank that overstated Germany's debt last year to the tune of €55 billion.
The embarrassing error resulted from a "misunderstanding" between the nationalised mortgage lender Hypo Real Estate and the subsidiary which manages its problem assets, FMS Wertmanagement, Schaeuble told a news conference.
At no time did it constitute a risk for German taxpayers and its discovery "does not mean Germany is now richer by a single euro or that it had been poorer beforehand," the minister insisted.
Schaeuble said his ministry learned of the scale of the error only on October 13. It came to light at a critical time for the euro zone given the backdrop of the current debt crisis, potentially placing a question mark over the reliability of Germany's public accounts.
It apparently arose because changes in the value of collateral held for derivatives were not fully taken into account. The error was reportedly uncovered in early October and in its half-year accounts, FMS was compelled to correct its balance sheet for 2010 to lower its debt by €24.5 billion and will reduce the borrowing figure for 2011 by €31 billion.
Because FMS is ultimately owned and guaranteed by the German government, this means the country's overall debt burden is expected to amount to 81.1% of gross domestic product this year instead of the previously estimated 83.7%.
