Irish investors have applied to invest more than £40 million in the Deutsche Telekom privatisation through NCB Stockbrokers.

While most investors will not get all the shares they are seeking - on average applicants will get half what they applied for - the level of interest from Ireland is surprisingly high.

The German telecom share placement, which attracted 1.7 million people from across the euro zone, attracted some 2,500 Irish individuals, putting Ireland in eighth place just behind Portugal and ahead of Finland.

Mr John Keilthy, head of private clients at NCB Stockbrokers, said the success of the issue is a very strong and positive indicator for retail interest in Telecom Eireann.

Mr Keilthy said the response from Irish individuals was well ahead of expectations. The company took a very low key marketing approach as it was anxious not to create confusion, given that the Telecom Eireann privatisation was happening at the same time.

"We did not actively promote it but in five days we took subscriptions of some £40 million." Deutsche Telekom yesterday set a price of €39.50 each for the 285.9 million shares sold in a secondary share offering that was two times oversubscribed.

Private investors are set to receive allocations of about 62 per cent of the entire offering.

Every applicant will receive the minimum order size of 50 shares, or £1,555 and 45 per cent of additional shares which they applied for.

The issue price matched Telekom's closing share price on Friday when it had fallen 6.8 per cent amid reports of selling by some institutional investors seeking to cheapen the offering. The new shares start trading today. Irish investors can expect to be informed of their holding over the next few days, Mr Keilthy said. The average Irish subscription was for around £10,000 and the average allocation is likely to be around £5,000, Mr Keilthy said.

Telekom chief executive Dr Ron Sommer told a news conference in Frankfurt the issue met with strong demand from private and institutional investors worldwide, with 60 million shares ordered in the United States and Japan alone.

He added that Telekom is now the company with the largest number of shareholders, as well as being the company worldwide with the largest number of shareholders outside its home market.

"More than 500,000 private shareholders in Italy, around 50,000 in Spain, almost 30,000 in France and more than 20,000 in the Netherlands clearly demonstrates that the T-share is the first real international share for the retail investor," Dr Sommer added.