Government may seek to sell bonds with maturity of 20 years

The Government may seek to sell long-dated bonds with a maturity of up to 20 years in the immediate aftermath of the bailout for the first time since the onset of Ireland’s debt crisis, Minister for Finance

Michael Noonan

has said.

He has also indicated an ongoing OECD review of international corporate tax rules may prompt changes in the Irish business tax regime in concert with other countries.

The Minister said in an interview with The Irish Times that pension funds and insurance companies in London had expressed their interest to him in buying bonds of a maturity of 15 or 20 years.

“I had a number of inquiries as to whether we were going to put bonds of long maturities in the market – that’s in excess of 10 years – and that would help us to eliminate some more of the peaks and valleys in our debt profile.”

He has referred the matter to the National Treasury Management Agency, which plans to sell €6-€10 billion of debt in the new year. This includes 10-year debt.

The NTMA last sold debt with a maturity in excess of 10 years in October 2009, when it sold a benchmark bond maturing in 2025.

"You see, we're funded out to the second quarter of 2015. I would hope by the time the middle of February comes we'll be funded up to 2016 – and then all debates about precautionary programmes will be off the agenda."

'Stateless'
His remarks on tax follow a unilateral move in Budget 2014 to prevent multinationals like Apple from making Irish-registered subsidiaries "stateless" in terms of their tax residency to radically cut their tax burden. "I mean, Ireland needs to go further but not unilaterally. So the next step then is to fully co-operate and participate in the various OECD committees that are addressing these issues."