Central Bank may up bond sales

The Central Bank may sell more of its holdings of the country’s bonds than scheduled this year, as yields on Irish benchmark notes hover at record lows, according to sources.

Last year, the State gave the Central Bank €25bn of government bonds, as part of a plan to push out the cost of bailing out Anglo Irish Bank. The bank, which planned to sell at least €500m of the notes by the end of this year, may offload more.

The Central Bank was handed the bonds to replace promissory notes, a form of shorter-term IOU, used as collateral for emergency funding which averted the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank. Selling bonds may help appease the ECB, which said last month that the Irish accord raises concerns as the region’s central banks are banned from financing governments.