The Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, thanked the Irish people on Sunday night for putting up with three years of IMF-EU imposed austerity but warned that prudent budgets would continue under his administration.

In a live address to mark the Republic’s departure from the multi-billion Euro bailout he said that “many families have had to face the devastating consequences of unemployment and emigration…I thank you for the part that you have played in Ireland’s recovery to date.”

Kenny promised that job creation is at the heart of the new plan and hopes to increase total employment in Ireland to over 2m people by 2020, “which would replace all of the jobs that were lost.”

On the credit-fuelled boom in property that caused the crash, particularly in the Irish banking sector, Kenny added: “We are never going back to that culture.”

The Republic received more than €67bn from the IMF and the EU to rescue the state from bankruptcy after the Celtic Tiger economy collapsed. In return the country had to endure cuts of billions of euros to social welfare, public sector wages and pensions, and the scrapping of many capital spending projects. Under the programme the government has to raise an extra €5.3bn in taxes and reduce public spending by €9.6bn.

Before the banking crash of 2008, Ireland had near full employment but was gorging on credit and fuelling in turn a massively overheated property boom. By the time of the bailout unemployment had soared to 15%.