According to Eurostat data, Ireland's budget surplus ranked second among EU countries in the second quarter of this year, and its debt level ranked eighth among EU countries.
Eurostat stated that Ireland's seasonally adjusted budget surplus (tax and other income exceeding expenditure) accounted for 2.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between April and June, while the EU as a whole was in deficit.
The government tends to use revised statistics that exclude some cross-border transactions to measure Ireland's debt and deficit.
Only Denmark has performed better than Ireland, with a surplus of 2.8% of GDP. Portugal followed Ireland with a surplus of 2.3% and ranked third.
After adjusting for seasonal factors, most other EU countries except Latvia and the Netherlands experienced budget deficits in the second quarter, which means that tax and other income were lower than expenditure.
The average deficit of the 20 member countries in the eurozone remained at 3.3% of GDP in the second quarter, which was flat compared to the first quarter.
For the 27 member states of the European Union, the deficit is 3.2%, an increase from 3.1% in the first quarter of 2023.
Eurostat said that measures to mitigate the impact of high energy prices will continue to have a significant impact on government revenue and expenditure in the second half of 2022 and 2023, and the impact of measures taken to deal with the COVID-19 epidemic is significantly lower than in previous quarters.
Ireland's debt to GDP ratio is 43.1%, far below the average level of over 90% in the eurozone and 83.1% in the EU.
The highest debt levels are Greece (166.5%), Italy (142.4%), and France (111.9%). The debt levels of Spain, Portugal, and Belgium have also exceeded 100%.
Estonia has the lowest debt level, accounting for 18.5% of GDP, followed by Bulgaria (21.5%), Luxembourg (28.2%), and Denmark (30.2%).
Compared to last year, Ireland's debt to GDP ratio has significantly decreased, with a decrease of over 7 percentage points compared to the second quarter of 2022.
Greece, Portugal, and Cyprus saw a greater decrease in debt, while Luxembourg, Finland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria saw a year-on-year increase in debt.
Compared to the first quarter of 2023, the debt to GDP ratio of 9 countries has increased, while the debt to GDP ratio of 18 countries (including Ireland) has decreased.
The government estimates that Ireland's surplus this year will reach 8.8 billion euros, accounting for 3% of the revised gross national income, and its debt will be 222.7 billion euros, accounting for 76.1% of the gross national income.