First long-term bond to be issued since crisis

Ireland is planning its first long-term bond issue since the financial crisis using the European bond-buying programme as a safety net.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan said that he plans to oversee the sale of a 10-year bond in the first half of this year. The Government is issuing the bond in order to qualify for the ECB bond-buying programme, known as Outright Monetary Transactions, that requires two long-term bond issues, but Mr Noonan said that this facility will only be used as a backstop.

“I don’t think we’d apply to avail of it,” he said. “We’d apply to use it as a backstop so that we could access the market, so that lenders would know that it’s there,” he told Bloomberg TV.