On Wednesday, January 14th, Ireland acting through the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), raised €5 billion through a syndicated sale of a new benchmark 10-year bond maturing in June 2036. Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland was delighted to be a joint lead manager along with Barclays, Bank of America, Goodbody, JP Morgan and NatWest Markets.

The new 10-year bond was issued with a coupon of 3.1% and came at mid swaps +26 basis points, a price of 99.617%, to give a re-offer yield of 3.145% (annual).

There was robust demand from a broad investor base for the new bond from the outset and the final order book closed at €43 billion with orders from just under 300 individual accounts. The largest distribution was Benelux at 24%, followed by the UK at 23%. Germany, Austria and Switzerland all took 12% and the Irish investor base 10%. Italian investors bought 9%, France took 8%, Iberia 5%, Nordics 5% and other European countries took 2%. Investors from the rest of the world/Americas were allocated 2%.

With respect to the investor categories, there was a high quality orderbook. Investor Types showed banks took down 47%, while Asset Managers accounted for 32%, Central Banks/Official Institutions took 15%, Pension Funds and Insurance Companies got 3% and Hedge Funds were allocated 3%.
Following the issuance of €5 billion in the transaction, the NTMA has completed just over 40% of the mid-point of its €10 to €14 billion bond funding range for 2026. The focus will now shift to the next funding event in March for the first Irish bond auction of the year.

Given their higher funding requirements this year, it will be interesting to see if there is a second syndication or if the NTMA just utilise the auction process to reach their target funding level. The NTMA have announced that the first bond auction of the year will be on Thursday the 12th of March. The auction process will be critical for the NTMA to maintain liquidity on the Irish bond curve this year. The performance of Irish bonds relative to our peers like Germany has been partly attributed to the lower issuance levels in recent years, coupled with Ireland’s impressive fiscal performance. This has seen the appetite for Irish debt remain robust.

The Exchequer figures for 2025 highlight the strength of Ireland’s fiscal position. There were record tax revenues of €107.4 billion collected last year. Of that, Corporation tax receipts in 2025, which are seen as a volatile source of revenue, were €32.9 billion, a 17.2% increase over 2024. The strong Exchequer returns point to a large General Government surplus for 2025 of c.€12 billion or 3% of GNI*. Governments across Europe are facing a dual challenge: fiscal pressures to reduce budget deficits whilst increasing infrastructure and defence spending. However, Ireland’s capacity to deliver the capital projects needed to address the large infrastructure deficits requires more political will than fiscal leeway. Ireland’s capital spending though remains on an upward trajectory – seeing growth of 12.1% last year – with the National Development Plan (NDP) proposing to spend 5% of GNI* each year or €275 billion in public capital investment over its lifecycle.

The Irish economy performed remarkably well last year despite the risks from Trump’s tariffs. The more volatile measure of Irish growth; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated to have grown by 20% in H1 2025, on the back of increased pharma exports to the US. The front-loading of those US pharma exports was one of the catalysts for the economic outperformance in the first half of the year – goods exports were up 41% to the end-June – with US goods exports amounting to €70 billion, Pharma products making up 90% of that. However, looking at Irish domestic growth, Modified Domestic Demand (MDD) is a much more reliable gauge of the domestic economy’s performance, and it grew by 4.2% between Q1-Q3. The dark clouds that were settling over the Irish FDI model at the beginning of last year were stark, but Ireland’s economic resilience shone through. There remain some uncertainties over the potential US tariff impacts this year, but the Irish economy should be able to navigate those risks adequately.

Whilst some uncertainties remain for the Irish economy in 2026, the strong start to the year for the Irish Government bond market with the NTMA’s well received new 10-year bond is a strong indicator of the current positive sentiment towards Ireland Inc from the International Investor Base.

Written By William Mullane, Fixed Income Sales