IRELAND – The issuance of Irish inflation-linked bonds would be "prudent" and assist the country's struggling pension sector, one of the country's oldest stock brokerage companies has said.

Colm Ryan, head of fixed income sales at Goodbody, insisted that there was "appetite" for inflation-linked bonds, which the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) said last year it would consider issuing.

However, at the time, the NTMA's chief executive John Corrigan also said the agency would look to raise as much as €5bn by the end of 2013, a target it has now exceeded with the January issuance of €2.5bn of bonds maturing in 2017 and a recent €5bn auction of 10-year bonds at 4.15%.

Speaking at the Irish Association of Pension Funds investment conference, Ryan said: "Looking at the difficulties the pension industry is currently in, it would be prudent from an economic management perspective for them to issue that debt."

He said the NTMA's previous reluctance to pursue such an issuance was over concerns of "runaway" inflation.

"That is slowly changing," he said. "There has been a number of rumours in the market over the last number of months that the NTMA is looking at inflation-linked – we haven't heard anything definite about.

"But I am hoping we get to see it in the very near future because there is an appetite for it."

Jerry Moriarty, the IAPF's chief executive, agreed during a later panel that inflation-linked issuances were not out of the question.

"My understanding is that they are still open to that, if they are convinced there is a market there for them," he said. "I don't think it's a closed-off issue from their point of view."

Inflation was repeatedly addressed during the conference in Dublin, with Paul Dolan, secretary to the trustees at An Post Superannuation Schemes, saying his fund had yet to fully address the issue.

Dolan noted that he was currently working on the scheme's funding proposal, due to be filed with the Pensions Board at the end of June, and that it would tackle inflation.

"Based on whatever recovery plan is in place, with some kind of LDI model, we will be looking to hedge against inflation and interest rates," he said.

"We have some exposure to forestry, property – real assets. People can argue that your exposure to equities is going to give you something like [inflation protection], but, as of now, we probably haven't really fully addressed that."

Dolan said the scheme, one of the country's largest – with €1.7bn in assets, according to An Post's 2011 annual report – was underfunded, despite returning an estimated 15% in 2012.

He added that the fund currently considered Irish sovereign debt "less attractive" due to the narrowing spread with German Bunds.

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