Ireland's economy will recover more quickly than several other European countries leading financial experts claimed this week.

During a meeting of world financial leaders, the Standard & Poor's credit rating agency offered an upbeat assessment on Ireland's economic future. David Beers, the agency's chief economist made the comments in Washington.

Mr Beers said "Ireland's competitiveness is improving because the labor market is flexible; they're cutting wages and salaries. So we think that among the peripheral countries it would be the first to begin to recover.”

"People think that the Irish political establishment may be suffering from exhaustion, reform fatigue. We actually do not detect that," he added.

Mr Beers said that Ireland's flexible private sector will result in a quicker recovery in comparison to our European counterparts. He also said that fiscal and political risks to the country were exaggerated. The economist was speaking in Washington during meetings between the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Speaking in the wake of his comments Gillian Edgeworth, an economist with Italian bank UniCredit said she believed that the Irish economy had “turned a corner”.