Irish bond auction an important step: ECB's Demetriades

Ireland's issuance of its first long-term bond since being bailed out is an important step towards qualifying for help from the ECB's bond-buying programme, European Central Bank Governing Council member Panicos Demetriades said.
In an interview with Reuters, conducted on Wednesday, the Cyprus central bank governor said euro zone economic recovery was holding to its projected path and the Italian election stalemate had not increased risks to growth.
The currency area's 17 finance ministers will meet on Friday in Brussels after an EU leaders' summit to discuss an urgently needed financial bailout of Cyprus, to add to the rescues of Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
Demetriades said a failure to secure funding for Cyprus would present "a systemic risk" for the whole euro zone but would not be drawn on the detail as negotiations were at a delicate stage.
He added, however, that a reigniting of debt crisis turbulence was the biggest risk to the euro zone economy. "The periphery is the biggest risk (to recovery), and at the minute it is Cyprus," the governor said, urging its European partners to conclude a bailout this month.
Ireland launched on Wednesday its first benchmark 10-year bond since its EU/IMF bailout, a landmark on its route to becoming the first bailed-out euro zone country return to full market funding.
The debt sale was snapped up and took Dublin closer to meeting the rules for the ECB's yet-to-be-activated bond-buying programme, dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), but not fully there, Demetriades said.
"It is an important step toward fulfilling the conditions for OMT," he said, sitting by a coffee table in his office. "But for full market access, one needs to look at the entire broad range of maturities."
Demetriades dismissed the view that the ECB might want to keep the programme - which has imposed market calm since it was unveiled in September - exclusively for large countries, especially Spain and Italy.
"We don't design programmes for specific countries. OMT was not designed for large or small countries," the former professor said. "Once a country fulfils the requirements of the programme, then its size shouldn't work against it or for it."