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Ireland will need some sort of euro-zone deal to relieve its huge banking debts for it to make further progress toward securing a permanent return to capital markets, the head of the National Treasury Management Agency, the country's debt office, said Sunday.

The Irish government last week hailed as a significant step its first sale of long-term debt for almost two years, when escalating bank-rescue costs forced it to embrace an international bailout.

It wants to be the first bailed-out country in the euro zone to emerge from an emergency program when the 67.5 billion euros (83.1 billion dollars) in loans it agreed in November 2010 with the European Union and International Monetary Fund expire at the end of 2013.

It has long said it deserves to "retro-refinance" as much as possible of the 64 billion euros Irish taxpayers injected to recapitalize and pay back private bank bond debt in six lenders since the onset of the country's severe property market crash in 2008.

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