Patrick Honohan: Ireland's EU-IMF Programme - delivering what it says
on the tin
Address by Mr Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland to the European
Commission DG-ECFIN Conference, Dublin, 10 January 2014.
* * *
Accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech.
Introduction
The EU-IMF programme of financial support for Ireland, negotiated in November 2010 and
with the final tranches of lending being completed about now, delivered what it said on the
tin. Amid turbulent market conditions, it provided a safe harbour into which Ireland was able
to retreat, in order to clarify its ability and determination to deal with the severe financial
problems that had so destructively erupted during the global financial crisis in September
2008. Those problems had their origin in the property bubble that had already begun to
deflate a little earlier, and which had not only generated the huge latent banking losses that
have been so much discussed, but also incubated severe fiscal and macroeconomic
imbalances.
The key to the return of market confidence to the extent that now exists has undoubtedly
been rigorous adherence to fiscal goals. Over the three years, a continuation of the
momentum of fiscal adjustments already initiated in 2008 has brought the public finances
back within striking distance of EU norms. The debt-to-GDP ratio has reached a peak and is
on target to fall in the coming year. Economic growth, albeit modest, has returned on a broad
front; both full time and part-time employment have been growing for many months now.
Residential property prices in the capital have bounced back a little from their lows of two
years ago, and have on average been broadly stable in the rest of the country also for some
months. Later I will speak a bit about how far the economy is nevertheless away from where
we need it to be. But it cannot be denied that, reflecting both policy and general economic
conditions, market confidence in Irish creditworthiness is higher than at any time since well
before the Greek crisis developments of May 2010.
It was not always obvious that this restoration of market confidence was going to work out.
The IMF staff appraisal of the initial programme proposal in December 2010 emphasised that
the risks were high. And, after the programme began, the euro area slipped into a second dip
recession which had its effect in slowing the Irish recovery. The cumulative change in GDP,
consumption and employment over the three years may have been as much as 2 percentage
points lower than projected (though GNP did not undershoot by much), and we end with an
unemployment rate at around 121⁄2 per cent instead of coming in below 12 per cent as was
expected.
Still, compared with the experience of other countries, the macroeconomic and especially the
fiscal outturn have been notably close to projection, and the macroeconomic shortfalls seem
attributable to the disappointing external factors and not to any miscalculation about the
inevitable extent to which the fiscal contraction would dampen the recovery (relative to the
infeasible alternative of unchanged fiscal stance).
In addition to fiscal discipline, improved financing terms that emerged in various manners in
the course of the programme represented a major contributing factor to the improvement in
debt sustainability and in market confidence, enabling the Irish state to fund itself in the
coming years.
In my remarks this morning, I will concentrate on the matters where the Central Bank was
most closely concerned, namely the broad liquidity, fiscal and debt issues and repair of the
banking system. A large number of other policy areas have seen action, consistent with what
was set out at the start. Many of these would no doubt have happened in time, given that
they had been long on the national policy agenda; some were no doubt accelerated. My
overall impression is that most of the specific measures urged on the Government by Troika
staff as the programme unfolded were sensible or inevitable; few were really bad ideas. And,
as had been foreseen, the Government had a considerable leeway in choosing specific
measures to meet the quantitative budgetary targets.
Going into the programme
The contributing factors to Ireland becoming the second euro area country to seek the
protection of an international loan from the IMF and European partners included fiscal and
banking factors, and a market reappraisal of Europe's attitude to sovereign bondholder
bailins.
On the fiscal side the market began - by the second half of 2010 - to realise that, despite
significant fiscal adjustment since late 2008, the Government's budget remained widely
unbalanced since tax receipts had collapsed in the immediate aftermath of the property bust,
and with the additional spending costs related to the associated surge in unemployment.
Announced budgetary plans were not going to close this gap.
The scale of banking losses, already acknowledged by April 2010 to imply a net budgetary
cost in the tens of billions, also continued to creep up during the summer, especially noticed
after the Government finally decided to wind-down Anglo Irish Bank. The degree to which
property-backed lending had distorted the banks' balance sheets meant that placing a
credible bound on potential future losses was hard: the potential for tail risks to generate
losses that might be unaffordable for the Exchequer to cover could not be convincingly ruled
out.
When a huge block of Government-guaranteed banking debt matured in September, the
banks required much more central bank refinancing; not surprisingly, the ECB also began to
focus on the Irish outlook with increased concern.
Talk of default in many quarters added to market anxiety and an outflow of deposits
resumed, with about €100 billion (almost three-quarters of that year's GNP) leaving in the
course of the year, the bulk of it in the last five months, and a good segment financed by
emergency liquidity assistance.
With the Deauville agreement (on future EU policy with regard to sovereign creditor haircuts)
casting further doubt on the sovereign's ability to continue to underpin both the continuing
part of the banking guarantee and its bond issuance, Irish credit spreads moved out to
unsustainable-looking levels.1
From the combination of all these factors, by early November, it was clear that the protection
of an official programme would be needed to enable the Government's spending programme
(which by then had been revised to deliver a convergent path for the public finances) to be
maintained.
Changing terms of Government debt in the programme
As initially agreed, the programme disappointed the Irish negotiators in a number of
dimensions, especially the rate of interest and the other side's inability to factor in the
banking risks in a way that would break the pernicious link between the sovereign and the
banks, a link which continued to inhibit the funding of both. Had the stress test of 2011
obliged the Government to inject as much as €35 billion into the banks (as was pencilled-in
by the Troika staff) - more than twice the figure finally struck in March 2011 - the
sustainability of the Government's debt profile would have been even weaker.
As we said publicly and privately at the time, alternative financing approaches, such as an
insurance scheme against extreme loan losses, or a direct recapitalisation by a European
entity, would have allocated risk more efficiently. But they were ruled-out by the other side,
who argued that no mechanism was available to accomplish this. That was certainly the case
for the IMF. Arguably, though, it would have been an appropriate time for further European
institutional innovation. Actually, had a European entity invested an equity stake, it could
have also used its own strong balance sheet to engineer2 much lower funding costs of the
banks; and it would have had an incentive to do so as it would thereby have generated a
sizable additional upside potential to the profits from its equity investment. This opportunity
was not taken.
More generally, forgoing - or at least lacking - the enhanced risk-sharing that such
mechanism would have afforded, the lenders proceeded with a programme which, at the
outset, had less favourable debt sustainability than was possible to achieve. Accordingly, the
lenders entered into what was in fact a riskier situation for them than necessary, although we
can now say that this risk has not materialised.
The interest rate initially charged on the European funds was in part modelled on the IMF
lending rate conventions, which envisage a sizable spread over the cost of funds. That is
what had been set for Greece in May 2010 and it was presented to the Irish negotiators as
non-negotiable. Whereas for developing countries such rates are typically attractive and
sustainable given the modest debt ratios that generally prevail, applying them to the levels of
indebtedness involved in the European loans was always going to be problematic. All
calculations (including those published by the IMF at the programme's outset), indicated
serious sustainability concerns at the terms offered.
I will not review here again the vexed question of guaranteed and unguaranteed bank debt.
Suffice it (in the present context) to say that the relevant unguaranteed Irish bank debt that
was still outstanding in November 2010 was left to mature, and largely did so before official
Europe had finally accepted a more incentive-compatible understanding of how the cost of
bank failures should be allocated. The bulk of the Government indebtedness attributable to
the bond-holder bailouts has, following the liquidation of IBRC (successor to Anglo Irish
Bank), now been folded into a portfolio of very long-term floating-rate notes (issued in place
of the non-transferable promissory notes, which would have been unsuitable instruments for
the Central Bank to hold).
In the event, the €67.5 billion borrowed from the European and IMF sources almost covered
the Government deficit from December 2010 to the end of 2013, of which about one-quarter
represented cash bank recapitalisation. There were long-term Government debt repayments
also in that period, but these were roughly balanced by new issues. This pattern is seen from
the "sources and needs" table summarised in Figure 1.3
Indeed many countries experienced banking failures in 2008 of comparable absolute
magnitude to that of the Irish banks. Like Ireland, each of Britain, Germany, the Netherlands,
Spain, France and Belgium saw banking failures that required their governments to step in
for €50 billion or even more. Given its smaller overall economy, however, such a sum, when
combined with the sudden erosion of the tax base, proved to be more than Ireland's public
finances could easily absorb. (Banking losses in Cyprus and Iceland were even larger than
those of Ireland in relative terms).
Gradually, Europe began to realise the broad interdependence of member states, especially
among euro area members in the banking sphere: poorly performing member economies
contributed to heightened systemic risk and slower growth across the entire euro area. The
single banking market and the single currency implied such an interdependency and had
encouraged policy thinking that focused on the euro area as a whole, and not on individual
countries. Awareness of the interdependency led, fairly early on, to a lowering of the interest
rate on the official borrowings from Europe and an extension of the maturities. When
combined with the lengthy maturity of the floating rate notes issued by the Government in
respect of the liquidation of IBRC, these new terms for a large fraction of official
indebtedness (amounting to over 50 per cent of GDP) have made all the difference to debt
sustainability calculations, both in terms of net present value, and also in terms of refinancing
risk.
The banks: liquidity
What happened to all the money that flowed in during the 2000s? The answer can be
expressed in different ways, and I will be selective here. From one point of view, the money
flowed out again: the pension funds, insurance companies, banks, sovereign wealth funds
and others who had invested in Irish bank bonds and wholesale deposits were repaid, at first
out of borrowings made from the eurosystem, and then increasingly out of the realisation and
sale of assets and the repayment of loans made by the banks.
Given all of the emphasis that has been placed on the different elements here, it is perhaps
worth looking at the magnitudes. Figures 2 and 3 look at the "Irish headquartered group" of
credit institutions which is the most relevant for our purposes. There has been massive
downsizing of this category of banks.4 (There has also been downsizing of the other banks
active in Ireland, but these are less central to the fiscal-banking nexus that has been at the
heart of the Irish crisis, so I will not dwell on that here).
A few points are worth noting from these figures. First, the relative importance of bonds and
deposits: deposits very much larger at all time periods; bonds5 disproportionately invested by
foreign concerns. Second, the changing relative importance of foreign business on both the
asset and liability side - growing up to the beginning of 2009, shrinking thereafter. Third, the
way in which central bank financing was used effectively in the classic lender of last resort
function during the crisis.
The banks: troubled loans
As was already foreseen at the outset of the programme, repairing the banks is a lengthy
process. At first, negotiators on the other side were inclined to wonder why more action had
not already been taken. But already by the time the programme had been negotiated, they
realised that this was going to take time. As IMF staff put it at that time: "The
criticallyweakened banking sector can be returned to health only at a calibrated pace."
Indeed, the textbook first steps: triage the viable banks from the nonviable; recapitalise the
former, and resolve the latter; were hampered both by the straitjacket created by the
guarantee, and by the potential scale of needed recapitalisation, and its threat to the
Sovereign.
This meant no asset fire-sales, and the target, ultimately achieved, of sharply reducing the
loan-to-deposit ratio was kept under review, not least to try to prevent the outbreak
(frequently threatened) of a destructive deposit price war. On the other hand, for example,
the other side's insistence that deposits should be promptly transferred out of the two fatally
damaged banks, Anglo and INBS, actually suited the authorities' intention to wind these
entities down as soon as the guarantee (which had effectively precluded such action) had
ended.
Had there been sufficient fiscal headroom, or if the damage had been limited to a segment of
the banking system, instead of infecting it all, more drastic de novo approaches to
establishing a well-functioning banking system might have been available options.
In the event, even injecting the proposed amount of capital in mid-2011 presented fiscal
risks. Although seen as newly flush with capital, the banks still lacked the confidence of the
market, which saw the fiscal situation as an over-arching threat to the banks. Paradoxically,
the attempt to strengthen the banks by sharply recapitalising was sufficiently credit negative
for the sovereign as to limit at first improvement in the banks' access to the market.
Only after sufficient further consolidation of the fiscal position (and a stabilisation of the wider
situation in the euro area) did the market's assessment of the creditworthiness of both
sovereign and banks improve.
That said, other parts of the banking repair have taken much longer than expected. Even
with Troika pressure the complex bankruptcy law reforms have come slowly; and on the
ground, the mortgage arrears and wider impaired assets problems are only now showing
clear signs of coming under control. These represent the major unfinished business as
Ireland exits the programme. Progress is being made, and more is needed before the banks
can be regarded as restored to fully effective and self-reliant operation. We will not relax in
this area.
Conclusion
So where has the Irish economy arrived in macroeconomic terms after three years of the
programme? Perhaps the best single picture for illustrating the pattern of macroeconomic
stabilisation is Figure 4 which shows that aggregate employment started growing again in
2012 and suggests that this resumes a gradually slowing trend that was in place for more
than a decade before interrupted by a construction related surge in the mid-2000s. To those
who wish to get back to the favourable and soundly-based economic conditions of the late
1990s, this is probably the most encouraging indicator. There is plenty of scope for
disagreement on the quantification, but the pattern is likely to be valid.
At the same time the figure also hints at how far below previous trend and medium term
potential the economy remains at this point. Unemployment, albeit moderated by emigration
and labour market exit, stands at 12.4 per cent.
In any assessment of the major macroeconomic adjustments that have occurred, the impact
on income inequality needs to be taken into account. Actually, we don't yet have the
comprehensive survey figures on this for 2012, but, while the available statistics indicate that
the downturn has had a broadly similar average percentage effect on incomes across the
distribution,6 an equal proportionate reduction in incomes of course hits lower income groups
harder: there has been a substantial increase in the proportion of poor households suffering
deprivation in the years since the crisis broke. A return to higher levels of employment will be
a macroeconomic key to reversing this situation.
The crisis will have a lasting unfavourable legacy. The accumulation of debt, public and
private, will continue to weigh on growth prospects in a variety of ways. And many
households are being affected by long term unemployment. But the damage can be
ameliorated by a variety of means, including work on labour market activation and continued
improvement of fiscal policy and measures.
Limiting the legacy damage is also the rationale for the Central Bank's persistence in
pressing the banks, in accordance with our mortgage arrears resolution strategy and targets,
to accelerate their work to ensure that non-performing loans are brought back into performing
status, and dealing with over-indebtedness by moving to sustainable solutions. These are
tasks which remain work in progress, though progress that is now accelerating.
In cushioning the impact of the loss of market confidence resulting from the crisis, the
programme did no more and no less than was promised on the tin. The rest is up to us.

8 BIS central bankers' speeches