{"id":656111,"date":"2026-10-16T02:40:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T02:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656111\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T02:40:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T02:40:16","slug":"ireland-sells-10-year-bonds-at-highest-rate-since-it-emerged-from-bailout-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656111\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland sells 10-year bonds at highest rate since it emerged from bailout \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Treasury Management Agency<\/a> (NTMA) has ended bond market fundraising for the year by selling 10-year notes at the highest interest rate since just after the Republic exited its international bailout programme. <\/p>\n

The State\u2019s debt-management agency sold \u20ac1.25 billion of bonds in an auction on Thursday morning, with the notes priced to carry a market interest rate \u2013 or yield \u2013 of just over 3.5 per cent. <\/p>\n

It was the highest rate the market demanded for new 10-year Irish Government bonds since January 2014, a month after the State exited a three-year international bailout programme. <\/p>\n

However, it was not the highest rate the NTMA has paid to raise long-term funding in the post-bailout era. In July, it issued 30-year bonds at a yield of 3.82 per cent, the highest rate for such debt since March 2013.<\/p>\n

The auction brings the total value of benchmark bonds issued by the NTMA this year to \u20ac12.3 billion, which is above the midpoint of a targeted range between \u20ac10 billion and \u20ac14 billion set out last December. The agency is led by chief executive Frank O\u2019Connor. <\/p>\n

Bond yields have jumped globally this year, mainly as investors bet on the extent to which central banks will increase official interest rates<\/a> to rein in inflation that has been stoked by the effect of the Iran war<\/a> on fuel prices<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"\"Microsoft president Brad Smith: Ireland is \u201cwell-positioned for future of AI\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, euro-zone rates have generally come back in from their highs in recent weeks as investors concluded money markets may have got carried away when they were pricing in four more rate hikes by the European Central Bank<\/a> (ECB) over 12 months. The ECB has already pushed through two quarter-of-a-percentage-point rate increases since the middle of June.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0NTMA sells \u20ac1.25bn of bonds amid market turmoilOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Other dynamics have also been at play in the European debt markets in recent times. Investors have been increasingly demanding higher rates for French and Italian debt, relative to Germany<\/a>, the main euro-zone benchmark, amid concerns about their high, and rising, debt levels. <\/p>\n

The yield on 10-year French bonds reached 4.9 per cent earlier this week, amid market concerns about political instability hampering efforts to bring the country\u2019s budget deficit under control. France<\/a> is heading into a presidential election next spring. <\/p>\n

The difference \u2013 or spread \u2013 between the yields on 10-year French and German bonds high 1.59 percentage points earlier this month, the widest since November 2011, at the height of the euro-zone sovereign-debt crisis. <\/p>\n

Italy<\/a>\u2019s \u20ac3-trillion government bond market, one of the world\u2019s biggest, has \u200bcome under renewed scrutiny amid contagion from a sharp sell-off in French debt. Bond yields move inversely to bond prices. <\/p>\n

Italian 10-year bond rates hit 4.7 per cent this month and the yield gap with safe-haven German bunds reached its widest in almost 18 months.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s national election next year throws doubt on Rome\u2019s plans to reverse the rise in \u200cits huge public debt, according to analysts. \u2013 Additional reporting: Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has ended bond market fundraising for the year by selling 10-year notes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[128,72,113,5485,12965,1814,61,5232,60,150432,102,40231],"class_list":["post-656111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bonds","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-energy-costs","tag-european-central-bank-ecb","tag-france","tag-ie","tag-interest-rates","tag-ireland","tag-israel-iran-conflict","tag-italy","tag-national-treasury-management-agency-ntma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656111","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=656111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}