A DECISION on whether the borrowing role of the Department of Agriculture should be given over to the National Treasury Management Agency will be made later in the year.
Discussions continue between the agency and the Department, the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Mr Michael Dowling, has told a meeting of the Dail Public Accounts Committee.
The committee had been discussing the findings of a report on Department borrowings, which had been compiled by the Comptroller and Auditor General's office last year on borrowing to fund EU schemes.
The Comptroller, Mr John Purcell, said the Department's strategy in borrowing abroad to fund the schemes had been generally well managed from 1983 to 1994.
However, there were exchange losses during the currency crisis in the early 1990s, and in 1992, £5.8 million was lost because the Department had borrowed in Japanese yen rather than European currencies.
Mr Dowling said the Department borrowed only with the permission of the Department of Finance. Japanese yen had been borrowed to meet unforeseen debts because no EU currency was available, he added.
There was no opposition in principle to giving borrowing control to the agency either as part of its own work or on a consultancy basis. However, said Mr Dowling, taking on Department of Agriculture borrowing might increase the Government's core debt and have implications for monetary union.
He said the Department would install a computerised system of debt management and hire financial expertise if agreement could not he reached with the NTMA to assume the role.
He added that the Department's total borrowings so far this year, £150 million, was in punts. By the end of the year this could rise to £520 million, of which £90 million would he needed to pay for EU beef intervention.