The National Treasury Management Agency has raised €1.5 billion in a government bond auction - its first since the euro zone bail-out deal was agreed.
There was strong demand for the Irish bonds in the market, which helped to keep the cost of raising the funds down.
Earlier this month, the NTMA considered skipping this month's auction due to turmoil on financial markets caused by the Greek debt crisis, which pushed up the cost of borrowing.
The NTMA had sought to raise between €1 billion and €1.5 billion today, but with strong demand from investors it sold the full €1.5 billion. The yield on the ten-year bond was 4.7% compared with 4.4% in the March auction, but analysts considered this an acceptable rate given the recent market turbulence.
The NTMA has now raised €13.2 billion, two-thirds of its €20 billion borrowing target for this year, and has a further €20 billion in a cash reserve.
The agency offered two bonds this morning - a 4% bond which matures in 2014 and a 10-year bond with an interest rate of 4.5%.
'Given the backdrop to this latest Irish bond auction, we believe the NTMA will be quite pleased with the result even though it ended up paying a higher yield than in earlier auctions,' said Bloxham economist Alan McQuaid.
Spanish borrowing costs also higher
Spain also sold €6.435 billion in bonds today, at a higher rate than the last issue as investors demanded a richer reward to lend money to Spain after recent debt scares.
The country's treasury settled for issuing less than its overall target of €6.5 billion in order to keep the interest rate down, a spokesman said.
Fears that Greece's debt crisis could engulf Spain and Portugal have hammered financial markets in recent months, pushing up Spanish and Portuguese borrowing costs and driving the euro to a four-year low.
After Spain's public deficit swelled to 11.2% of output last year, the Socialist government has committed to an austerity drive to slash the shortfall between its revenues and its spending to 3% in 2013.
