New figures from the Central Statistics Office show the Government finances had a surplus of €3.5 billion for the fourth quarter of 2021 after a series of deficits since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The fourth quarter of last year saw revenues of €31.1 billion, while Government expenditure came in at €27.7 billion.
The CSO said the surplus was an improvement of €5.2 billion on the same quarter in 2020, and was mainly driven by an increase in tax revenues of €5.6 billion.
Today's CSO figures show that expenditure on Covid-19 measures amounted to about €2.4 billion in the last three months of 2021, which was €1.6 billion lower than in the same time in 2020.
The decrease was mainly due to lower expenditure on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment which reduced to €0.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to €1.3 billion the same time the previous year.
The CSO also said the general government gross debt to GDP ratio was at 56% at the end of the quarter, down from 58.4% at the end of the fourth quarter in 2020.
It said this reduction was driven entirely by the increase in GDP as the overall debt was up by €18 billion.
Over that same time frame, the general government net debt to GDP ratio moved from 49.8% to 45.7%, it added.
