OREANDA-NEWS. The Central Bank of Ireland has published its latest dataset on the holders of Irish government bonds.

  • The nominal value outstanding of government bonds increased by €604 million to €125,541 million in October 2015.

  • Non-residents have significantly increased their holdings of Irish Government bonds over the past year, to 60.2 per cent of outstanding bonds, up from 54.4 per cent 12-months earlier.  The pace of this increase is easing as holdings by the combined domestic credit institutions and Central Bank increase.

Outstanding government bonds stood at €125,541 million in October 2015, with 19 per cent due to mature in less than three years. At end-October 2015, Irish residents held 39.8 per cent of long-term Irish government bonds. Irish credit institutions and the Central Bank of Ireland account for 92.2 per cent of the resident holdings (Chart 2).

The holdings of Irish Government bonds by Irish credit institutions and the Central Bank of Ireland have increased by €856 million over the past 3 months.

Holdings of non-residents increased by €470 million during the month.  Over the past year non-resident holdings have risen from 54.4 per cent to 60.2 percent of the total (an increase of over €14.1 billion).

Within the next 5 years, €58.1 billion of Government bonds will mature (Table 1).  Non-residents hold 68.9 per cent of these maturing bonds.