News: ONE Irish health firm's shares buoyant on Australian St Patrick's Day listing

Shares of Oneview Healthcare Plc (ONE) hovered around their issue price in Thursday afternoon trade, as the Irish health software developer chose St Patrick's Day to become Ireland's first business to list in Australia.

The stock reached as high as A$3.70 in its first minutes before stabilising at A$3.58, while the broader market (xjo) was up 1.2 percent.

The Dublin-based company, which makes software for hospital patients to stay abreast of their treatment, sold a third of the company for A$62.4 million in an initial public offering (IPO) to fund growth in Australia, the United States and elsewhere.

"Australia is our most mature market and 50 percent of our shareholders are Australian," founder and Executive Director Mark McCloskey told Reuters at the Australian Securities Exchange, where Irish dancers, green balloons and green neckties celebrated both the listing and Ireland's national festival.

Oneview said the listing was a milestone for Irish-Australian corporate relations, but other companies and bankers will also be watching it for signs that Australia's IPO market still has appeal following a quiet 2015.

Oneview's technology is in four hospitals in Australia, where the health sector is growing quickly as a result of an ageing population. With that growth, the government has been cutting subsidies - a factor McCloskey said would stoke demand for products that improved efficiency.

The ageing population drove the country's total health expenditure to A$154.6 billion ($117.16 billion) in 2014, a 112 percent increase from a decade earlier.

($1 = 1.3196 Australian dollars)