LONDON: The UK has now been paid £358m in interest by Ireland following a crisis loan it gave to the country in 2010, according to the latest Treasury report. A total of £3.2bn was lent by the UK to the Republic as part of an international rescue package of the country’s collapsing economy. Since June 2014, the UK has received an interest payment of around £42m every six months. It will be March 2021 before the bilateral loan’s term is up. The final tranche of money was paid to Ireland in September 2013.
The Republic is one of the UK’s main export markets – at the time the loan was given, it accounted for 5% of Britain’s total exports and two-fifths of Northern Ireland’s exports. Many Irish companies are listed on the London Stock Exchange. In late 2010, the Royal Bank of Scotland lent billions in Northern Ireland – loans which were insured by British taxpayers as RBS is a semi-nationalised bank. If the Irish economy were to implode, that would have generated large losses for RBS and the UK taxpayer. In 2012, Chancellor George Osborne reduced the rate of interest on the loan in line with Eurozone lenders.
