The Government’s debt manager, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), has sold €1 billion of bonds in an auction.
Despite a cash surplus in the euro zone government bond market this week of almost €19 billion - more than €5.5 billion of it from maturing Irish bonds - demand at the auction was weak, analysts said.
The sale was the first after ratings agency Moody's put Ireland's credit rating on watch for possible downgrade.
"The cover ratio is nothing to write home about but they'll be pleased to have another billion of funding done," said Dan McLaughlin, chief economist at Bank of Ireland in Dublin.
Ireland has to raise around €25 billion in debt this year to help plug the worst public finances in Europe but it will likely have to raise tens of billions more to fund the National Assets Management Agency to cleanse banks of bad debts.
The cost of bailing out the banks will also be more expensive after Standard & Poor's and Fitch cut the country's credit rating to AA+ earlier this year.
The sales marked the first reopening of the two bonds. Ireland sold €300 million of 4 per cent January 2014 paper which was covered 1.6 times and €700 million of its 4.5 per cent 2018 bond which drew a paltry cover ratio of 1.1, meaning it was barely covered.
The sales were a departure from the auction of 2011 and 2020 bonds on March 24th, when the cover ratios were 3.8 and 2.7 times.
"Some of this was priced in last week. What has caused the real upset for Ireland was that last week's risk appetite, fed by the strong start to the earnings season, continued to correct, and this risk-averse environment has hammered demand for high-yield sovereign bonds, favouring Germany," said Peter Chatwell, a bond strategist at Calyon in London.
The March auctions resulted in the Irish debt yield curve outperforming euro zone benchmark German Bunds by around 20 basis points, making the Irish spread over Germany narrow, said David Schnautz, a bond analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.
“The spread on our bonds relative to Germany has narrowed in by about 40-50 basis points from the time of the last auction in March so in that sense there are probably investors who would have come in at a 50 basis point wider spread and wouldn't
come in at this spread," Oliver Whelan, NTMA's director of funding and debt management, told Reuters.
"Given the overall market conditions, which were difficult enough, we were pleased with the way the auction went and with the cover and we will hopefully continue the auction process as we had planned," he added.
Some observers said Ireland was hostage to its issuance plans.
"With a scheduled auction calendar you are to some degree at the mercy of sentiment whereas they could previously pick and choose a moment when they knew demand was strong," said Bank of Ireland's McLaughlin.
The difference in yield, or spread, between Irish and German 10-year Government bonds widened to 213 basis points today from 209 basis points yesterday.
It reached 284 basis points on March 19th, the most in 10 years, compared with an average of 20 basis points over the past 10 years.
Reuters/Bloomberg