Last month, the NTMA sold the first 'century bond' in its history – €100m-worth of Government paper maturing in 2116 and priced at a yield of 2.35%. Given the current pricing of 30-year bonds, a comparable US bond would yield around 5.7-6.0 % if the US Treasury actually tried to issue one.

The 100-year bond was a symbolic point for Ireland.

Coming while the country commemorated the centenary of the 1916 rising, it was a marker of final departure from the unprecedented (in scale and nature) financial and economic crises of 2008-2016. As a signal, it was of immense value for the political elites of the state, even if of zero economic or social value to ordinary people.

Yet the irony was there for anyone to see: another 100-year bond was issued by Mexico back in 2015. Super-long-dated debt, it seems, is neither a sign of economic success, nor a signal of institutional maturity – a point missed by the Irish tax-and-borrow -and-spend cheerleaders.

To understand that, it is necessary to look at the political dynamics in post-election Ireland. Just as Irish borrowing costs continued to trace historical lows, the country's political crisis was in full swing. Two months without a Government would have put any normal economy onto a negative watch with the bond-rating agencies. But in the case of Ireland, no one seemed to care – the markets chugged along, cheering the fortunes of this debt-laden country, and buying Irish debt to beat the band.

This is in stark contrast to Ireland five years ago, when yields on Irish 10-year bonds hit highs of 14.2%. Today, they are sitting at around 0.7%. Much of this is driven by the ECB's policy of quantitative easing, that saw Frankfurt buy billions worth of Irish bonds, dropping rates and propping up 'private-sector' buyers of Government debt. But much of it is also down to global investors' ignorance of the economic conditions underwriting the solvency of the Irish Exchequer.

Let's take a look at the key sources of sovereign risks.

Politically, the Irish legislature and government establishment now resembles a beehive with lots of buzzing and little serious long-term output. The resolution of the stalemate at the top of the Government 'Confidence and Supply' pyramid, seemingly achieved by the grand 'facilitation' agreement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is a temporary bridge across the gaping chasms between the Irish electorate and the country's elites. This chasm is best highlighted by the lack of any policy coherence driving the two parties.

The problem, from the long-run policy point of view, is not the expected duration of the Government, but the policy vacuum that it is likely to engender. The agreement between FF and FG suggest that the Government will focus on 'spend more, tax less' objectives that are based on the implicit assumption that strong economic growth will last the next three years.

Hence the rumoured commitments include: reviving 24-hour cardiac care at Waterford Regional hospital, spending more on policing (solely on expanding the Garda ranks and supporting pay increases in the force), 'investing' in other public services (read: increasing pay and hiring), extending mortgage-interest relief, subsidising access to housing for public-sector workers, and expanding the Rent Supplement scheme.

The game of plodding political chess since the 2016 General Election has been about giveaways for October Budget 2017. Over the course of negotiations, Fine Gael has moved from a €500m commitment to over €1bn in spending and tax cuts, without any new resources being identified to fund it. And that is before we cost in the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil commitment to replace the Lansdowne Road Agreement upon its expiration in September 2018. For this, the Coalition has agreed to create yet another quango. No prizes for guessing which direction taxpayers' cash will be shovelled once it completes its work.

All of this strongly signals that the new Government is willing to trade the competitiveness gains achieved through the suffering of private and public workers for Dáil votes in the near term. But it also signals the new Government's total incapacity to focus on a long-term economic agenda.

Which brings us to the second source of sovereign risk: the economic conditions underpinning Ireland's miraculous recovery since 2014.

The aggressive fiscal expansion which Fine Gael will oversee will be built on expectations of robust growth in Government revenue. The expected sources for this growth, in turn, are sustained strength in corporation-tax and income-tax revenue, and an uplift in capital-tax revenue, due to real-estate buzz. These hopes carry significant risks; some are better understood than others, and all are linked to the prospects of the Government delivering long-term growth backed