{"id":225350,"date":"2026-01-03T14:43:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T14:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/225350\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T14:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T14:43:13","slug":"ntma-to-tap-bond-market-as-soon-as-next-week-selling-billions-of-irish-government-bonds-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/225350\/","title":{"rendered":"NTMA to tap bond market as soon as next week, selling billions of Irish Government bonds \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Treasury Management Agency<\/a> (NTMA) is expected to launch a multibillion-euro bond sale as soon as next week, having confirmed on Friday that it is planning a debt issuance through a syndicate of banks and brokerages during the first quarter of this year. <\/p>\n

The agency, which manages fundraising and the debt of the State, also said it plans to hold one bond auction during the period, on March 12th. <\/p>\n

The State is typically among the first sovereigns in Europe every year to carry out a syndicated bond deal to get ahead of a slew of issuance from countries and corporations. However, in the past two years, it has opted to tap the bond markets in the middle of January. <\/p>\n

Last January, the NTMA raised \u20ac3 billion through the sale of 30-year bonds.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the lower funding requirements of recent years, the NTMA has been less inclined to jockey for a position on the issuance slate and have instead exercised patience when coming to the market with a new issue at the start of the year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith the return of more normal funding requirements, we expect the agency to have a keener interest in engaging the market this time round,\u201d said Roderick McAuliffe, a bond trader with Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect the agency to issue a new benchmark 10-year [bond] within the first half of the month.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency, led by chief executive Frank O\u2019Connor, published in investor update on its website days before Christmas, which is being seen by market participants as a clear signal that it intends to be an early issuer again in 2026. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland to raise as much as \u20ac14bn in bonds next yearOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The NTMA plans to issue between \u20ac10 billion and \u20ac14 billion in long-term debt, the agency said in a statement early last month. That compares to a range of \u20ac6 billion to \u20ac10 billion originally planned for 2025. The debt office ultimately raised about \u20ac8.25 billion.<\/p>\n

The higher target for this year reflects the fact that \u20ac15 billion in debt maturities must be refinanced in 2026.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s bond sales will come against a backdrop of growing concerns about the sustainability of the State\u2019s tax receipts, with corporation tax in particular under the spotlight given a handful of big multinationals account for such a huge proportion of that tax.<\/p>\n

Still, the Government collected a record monthly figure of \u20ac10 billion in corporation tax in November, amid a likely surge in payments from the tech and pharma sectors.<\/p>\n

The NTMA investor presentation highlighted that while the Irish economic position is \u201cresilient\u201d, headwinds from US tariffs on trading partners globally \u2013 including the EU \u2013 \u201cwill impact growth in 2026\u201d. The Government forecasts that Irish modified domestic demand \u2013 a measure of economic growth that strips out the activities of foreign-owned multinationals \u2013 will ease to 2.3 per cent this year from 3.3 per cent in 2025. <\/p>\n

The State is \u201cwell positioned against the backdrop of uncertain markets\u201d even though Ireland still has debt of more than \u20ac200 billion and there is no place for complacency, Mr O\u2019Connor said in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a strong market awareness of the buffers we have in place through our funding and debt management strategy,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor at the time. \u201cThe strength of our public finances coupled with the long weighted average maturity of our debt, means we expect to have relatively low borrowing requirements in the short to medium term.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NTMA had \u20ac43.1 billion of cash and liquid investments on its balance sheet as of the end of November, according to the latest presentation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) is expected to launch a multibillion-euro bond sale as soon as next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,1523,61,60,40231],"class_list":["post-225350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-government","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-treasury-management-agency-ntma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}