You can tell the first phase of the sovereign debt crisis is easing when both Iceland, the country that got bailed out by the IMF, and Ireland, the country that readers of the Daily Telegraph were informed was heading out of the eurozone, can trade and buy debt more cheaply abroad.

Not so long ago Iceland was propping up the bottom of the creditworthy tables, featuring with the likes of Argentina and Ukraine as the most expensive to insure on the credit defualt swap (CDS) markets. Last October, holders of its debt had to pay out an insurance premium worth almost 15% of the value of any debt purchased. On Friday, the premium demanded for Icelandic debt had fallen to 8.5%, closer to the 6.8% that EU member Latvia must pay.

Back home, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan and his cabinet colleagues have probably chosen the right time to fan across Europe and the US to preach to our sovereign debt holders that Ireland is very much in business. On Friday, the CDS market was demanding Irish holders pay a premium of 1.6%, the lowest rate since the start of this recent crisis in mid-January. The Irish premium hit an all-time high of almost 3.8% in February, suggesting that international investors then believed Ireland had about a 30% chance of failing to meet a debt repayment this year.

Over on the sovereign debt markets, the interest payment that Ireland must pay to service its debt pile was trading on Friday at just above 5%, down from a huge 6% reached at the height of the crisis in late February.

That rate is still the same as Greece and 1% more than Austria need pay. So, is it a mission impossible for government ministers to help nudge that interest rate below 5%?