Publications
Partners
London - From bailout and near bankruptcy, Ireland has staged such a remarkable turnaround that its debt is now on a solid path towards France and Belgium - catching up with countries seen as safe bets when it was shunned by the market three years ago.
After a storming return to bond markets last week - meeting almost half its funding target for 2014 - Ireland is now eyeing an upgrade by Moody's, possibly as soon as Friday, that would unleash a further wave of investment.
Last week's 10-year debt sale offered a yield of just 3.5%, a far cry from the 15% quoted on secondary markets in mid-2011 and puts Ireland almost within 100 basis points of countries like France and Belgium, and a further 70 points away from benchmark Germany.
Credit rating
France and Belgium are sometimes described as members of the euro zone's "soft core", a tier of debt below core states like Germany but safer than the periphery countries hit hardest by the crisis, like Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greece.
Dublin is hoping a run of good news - becoming the first euro zone country to exit a bailout, accelerating economic growth and falling unemployment - will continue on Friday when Moody's is due to review its "junk" rating.
If Moody's restores the country to investment grade, large, mainly Asian-based ratings-sensitive funds would be free to rejoin the scramble for Irish paper.
Fellow ratings agencies Standards and Poor's and Fitch kept Ireland's investment grade rating during the crisis.
