The tax take for the year to the end of May was €734m higher than expected.
At the end of May, the Exchequer recorded a surplus of €641m, which compares to a deficit of almost €3.5bn in May 2014.
High consumer spending in the first five months of the year saw €5.7bn in VAT collected, an increase of almost 10% on 2014.
Corporation tax was also up by half a billion euro, year-on-year.