Ireland will continue to fight European finance chiefs for a deal on its legacy bank debt, the country's finance minister has said.

As the once financially crippled nation marked its exit from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) €85 billion euro (£71.6bn) loan programme, Michael Noonan said it will still pursue a restructuring of the lenders' debt.

The minister said: "Everybody owes a debt of gratitude to all those Irish men and women who have made such sacrifices to get us out of the greatest crisis that this country has experienced since the famine.

"The Government is committed as well to creating jobs, getting people back to work, getting our emigrants to come back home so that families can be reunited again."

Its debt masters, a Troika of the IMF, the European Central Bank and European Commission, have carried out 12 intense reviews over the last three years and imposed a series of tough targets, all of which were met by the state.

The Irish public has endured four austerity budgets since the EU/IMF agreed to grant the bailout.

Over those three years, the Government has hiked taxes to the tune of €5.3bn (£4.5bn) and cut public spending by a cumulative €9.6bn (£8.1bn).

The country's unemployment rate soared above 15% before the bailout.

Mr Noonan was honoured today by the German-Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce with an award for achieving the bailout exit.

The country will officially exit the programme on Sunday.