A stock market flotation of shares in the nationalised Allied Irish Banks is more likely to take place in mid-2016 than later this year, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has said.

Although the Government had made preparations for an initial public offering this autumn, the Minister this morning suggested the flotation will not take place before the election.

“The only window for an IPO left this year is in November, and I have said that the IPO isn’t going to be influenced in any way by the political calendar,” Mr Noonan told reporters at the publication of the annual report of the National Treasury Management Agency.

“While there is a window there, the likelihood is that the IPO will go into the middle of 2016, late spring, summer of 2016, something like that.”

At the publication of the NTMA annual report, the agency’s chief Conor O’Kelly said it plans to smooth out €35 billion in repayment “chimneys” [of the national debt] \between 2018 and 2020.

“We’ll focus strategically on trying to manage ahead ... maybe getting some switching and buybacks going to try and smooth out what the requirement will be. That will be a significant focus.”

Options include the issuing of inflation-linked or dollar denominated bonds.

Asked whether investors had raised questions about the election, Mr O’Kelly said the matter had been raised only at the “very margins” of discussions. “Maybe questions number 8, 9, 10 on peoples’ list and probably only half the time that it gets mentioned.”

In his experience, investors were generally not that interested in elections until you get closer to the actual event. “They don’t spend an awful lot of time on polls, on speculation.”

Asked what questions were being raised by investors, he said: “They’re asking what is the likelihood of a change from a general centrist coalition type scenario. That’s generally what they’re asking – and I normally kick high into the stand.”

Mr Noonan said his aim in the October budget was to bring the level of national debt to 100 per cent of GDP next year or below it. Ireland’s debt, which peaked at 123 per cent of GDP after the crash, was cut to 110 per cent of economic output at the end of 2014.

“At the end of this year – and we’re close enough to the end now to be able to predict with a degree of accuracy – it will be at 105. In the budget in October I’m going to be budgeting to bring it to 100 \[per cent] or to break through 100,” Mr Noonan said.

“When you think that the average debt for the euro zone is a shade under 95 per cent of GDP , we’re coming very very close to the European average on a time span I wouldn’t have predicted even two years ago.”

Echoing Mr O’Kelly, the Minister said events in Greece had not really affected Ireland.

“We’re no longer rated with the Mediterranean countries which were involved in programmes. We’re seen increasingly now as an economy more like the small northern countries in Europe.”

Mr O’Kelly said the fact that Ireland’s debt was unperturbed amid recent market volatility over Greece demonstrated that Ireland was seen as a “semi-core” debt issuer in the market.

“When you look at where we’re ranked by the bond markets currently, we’ve been defined in a kind of a semi core category – not quite peripheral, not core,” he said.

“In recent volatility and market moves around the the Greek story and around the European uncertainty, Ireland’s position as a semi-core credit was really confirmed.”

He characterised 2014 as the year the State made a smooth return to private debt markets, followed by moves to refinance expensive IMF debt with cheaper debt of longer maturities.

The NTMA has raised €11.3 billion so far this year, just over 90 per cent of its requirement.

“The statistic I like to use on this – it’s not exactly accurate, but it’s very very close – is that that funding has been done at double the maturity of last year and at half the yield. That really is showing how dramatic the improvement in our credit story is and of course the impact of QE,” he said in reference to the European Central Bank’s bond-buying campaign.

“We’ve issued at the yield of 1.5 per cent on average this year versus 2.8 per cent last year and our average maturity this year has been close to 19 years versus just over 10 years last year.”

The NTMA raised €5 billion via two sales of a 30-year bond at the start of this year, the latter €1 billion of which was sold at the yield of 1. 3 per cent.

“That is extraordinarily low in terms of that kind of maturity. You can never say what’s going to happen in financial markets but it will be quite some time before Ireland gets to issue a 30-year security at that kind of yield again.”

Mr Noonan said he would not be instructing Nama to appear before the finance committee in Stormont to answer questions about the sale of its Northern portfolio. All his relationship with State agencies such as Nama were governed by law, he said.

“I have no legal authority to request or instruct Nama to appear before any forum outside the jurisdiction,” he said.

“As well as that, Nama are obliged to be accountable to the Houses of the Oireachtas through the [Public Accounts Committee] and to make themselves accountable to any other forum would be in breach of that.

“Nama are quite willing to answer any questions that are considered relevant by the Northern Ireland finance committee.”