The European Commission has welcomed the Budget, which received a first approval from the Dáil late yesterday.
The Budget opens the way for international loans to start flowing to Dublin as part of the agreed IMF/EU rescue package.
"It is a successful first step towards the implementation of the programme that was agreed with the EU and the IMF," Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj said in Brussels.
Yields on Irish 10-year bonds were 8.016 per cent today, down 0.01 per cent over the day.
But yields on German government bonds, normally seen as a safe haven by investors, rose today as deepening uncertainty over how to stem the euro zone's debt crisis hit even Europe's strongest economy.
The yield on the 10-year German Bund, the benchmark for all euro zone debt, topped 3 per cent for the first time in seven months, partly due to a sell-off in US Treasuries but also due to anxiety over policy diferences within the European Union.
Germany and France are pushing for an EU summit next week to approve a proposed treaty change that would allow debt-stricken euro zone states to make an orderly default, with private sector bondholders sharing losses on a case-by-case basis.
But euro zone finance ministers did not agree on any new action this week to stem the crisis, fuelling bond market doubts about whether the bloc can find a formula to halt contagion in the 16-nation single currency area.
The Bund yield has shot up from 2.4 per cent in early November, while the borrowing costs of weaker euro zone economies - Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy - have also surged due to market jitters over default risks.
"In the absence of a rise in inflationary expectations, this increase is due entirely to market uncertainties over Germany's own exposures to save the eurozone, and the size of fiscal transfers needed," the Eurointelligence financial website said.
A sale of €4 billion of two-year German bonds found poor demand today, drawing total bids worth less than the amount on offer, amid wider uncertainty about the euro zone.
Peter Chatwell, rate strategist at Credit Agricole in London, said bond markets were "suffering huge volatility in thin liquidity at the moment".
International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn criticised Europe's slow, piecemeal response to the debt crisis yesterday and called for a comprehensive solution.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected the two most widely discussed proposals for surmounting the crisis - increasing the size of the euro zone's financial safety net or issuing joint bonds to reduce weaker states' borrowing costs.
A German government spokesman said there were economic and legal hurdles to introducing such 'E-bonds', which would not be possible without fundamental changes to the EU's Lisbon Treaty. Berlin was still against the idea.
The chairman of euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, accused Berlin of spurning the bond proposal without examining it properly. Mr Juncker put forward the suggestion this week with Italian economy minister Giulio Tremonti.
Reuters