Figures from the European Central Bank show that the amount of government bonds it bought last week rose sharply.
The ECB bought €338m in euro zone government bonds, a relatively small amount but nonetheless well above the €10m in bonds purchased a week earlier.
By comparison, in the first two weeks of the bank's Securities Markets Programme in May, the bank bought more than €26 billion worth of bonds.
The ECB offsets such public bond purchases by taking in an equal amount of one-week deposits from commercial banks so the operations do not increase the amount of money in circulation.
There had been speculation that the ECB bought Irish bonds the week before last after the spread over German bonds - the premium demanded by investors for buying Irish rather than German bonds - rose sharply.
