DUBLIN: Ireland sold 500 million euros of 15-year bonds as planned on Thursday at a yield of 1.56 percent as the country's debt agency seeks to pre-fund the state in full for 2016.

Ireland was already halfway towards its target of raising between 12 billion and 15 billion euros of long-term bonds before the auction, which received 3.15 times more bids than the value of the paper on offer, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) said in a statement.

Copyright Reuters, 2015