There was a slight slowdown in taxes coming in to the Government last month with DIRT and VAT performing marginally weaker than expected.

But the coalition's still collected more than half a billion euro more than expected since the start of the year.

An exchequer deficit of 2.3 billion was recorded between January and April - down from 4.7 billion last year.

The difference is due to increased tax receipts and the transfer of the proceeds from the sale of Bank of Ireland shares to the exchequer.