The euro strengthened against the dollar Friday in New York

The euro strengthened against the dollar Friday in New York as the region's officials continued to hammer out a loan package for financially stressed Ireland. Moving toward an answer to the question of whether Ireland will accept a lifeline has lifted some of the cloud of uncertainty that had hung over the euro zone, allowing the common currency to rise. "Intensification of pressures in Ireland had been problematic," said Robert Lynch, currency strategist at HSBC in New York. "The seeming progress toward constructing an aid package seems to ease some of those stresses and pressures on the euro" in the short term, he said. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said Friday that the second day of talks with European counterparts were "going well." Officials from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in Dublin to examine Ireland's finances and banking system. This may include the activation of the European Financial Stability Facility, the EUR440 billion emergency loan program created to help euro-zone countries refinance their debts. Still, even if Ireland strikes a rescue deal, "investors are likely to turn their attentions to the next victim," in the euro-zone debt crisis, with Portugal waiting in the wings, making the euro's modest gains possibly fleeting, said Andrew Wilkinson, senior market analyst at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Conn. The U.K. pound, though, didn't fare as well as the euro, with sterling falling by about 0.4% against the greenback as investors worried about U.K. banks' exposure to Irish debt.