Where would we be if them bastards didnt bail the banks

yoloc

Just as the title suggests. Where would this country be if we had of told the banks to GTF and not bailed them out. TBH im not very clued up on all this stuff that goes on concerning it but one thing i do know is that we are up **** creek.

I understand that the property market did need correcting but as a whole, would the country be a happy place to live in now or would we still be seeing mass's of people emigrating, mass job cuts etc..

Jester252

Not to different from today.

We'd still be in the shít, but the tax burden would have been less and the bailout would have been smaller.
The main issue is that this economic downturn was not entirely down to the banksters, it is mainly down to having an economic system that is hard coded to only operate in perpetual growth mode. When growth declines it fails, and it did!

We simply cannot expect a system that requires infinite growth to function indefinitely in a finite world.

Dartz

Anyone with money in the banks who wasn't fast enough to withdraw it would've been ****ed.

Perpetual growth would work if we had a space program. Space is infinite.

kneemos

I would have been on a flight from South Korea to San Francisco...lucky.

K.Flyer

So, with hindsight, is there anyone who advocated the bailouts and the routes that the government took, now feel that we were had and have changed their opinion, or, do they still believe the government(s) made the right choices.
Personally I believe there was a huge amount of scare mongering, especially no cash at the ATMs, etc.
Yes we may still be in some sort of sh1t, but probably not so sricky and smelly.

onemorechance

We would have been left with empty atm's.

K.Flyer

onemorechance wrote: »

We would have been left with empty atm's.

Maybe at the Anglo ATM, but why the rest of them.

Phill Ewinn

Didn't need to bail Anglo at all. The rest of em should have negotiated their losses. They didnt. Were screwed.

onemorechance

K.Flyer wrote: »

Maybe at the Anglo ATM, but why the rest of them.

I think there was a fear that the same thing would happen as with the Northern Rock bank in the UK where people were queueing up to empty their accounts.

Or even worse, chaos like in Argentina!

At the time, the bank guarantee (100k deposits) given by the Irish Government was wholly praised internationally as a great move; this was of course before it became known that the banks had lied about their liabilities.

Speisekarte

[Deleted User] wrote: »

We'd still be in the shít, but the tax burden would have been less and the bailout would have been smaller.
The main issue is that this economic downturn was not entirely down to the banksters, it is mainly down to having an economic system that is hard coded to only operate in perpetual growth mode. When growth declines it fails, and it did!

We simply cannot expect a system that requires infinite growth to function indefinitely in a finite world.

Can you explain what it means for an economic system to fail?

K.Flyer

Phill Ewinn wrote: »

Didn't need to bail Anglo at all. The rest of em should have negotiated their losses. They didnt. Were screwed.

IF... Big if..
They had let Anglo fall and worked with the rest of them, or none of them, can anyone show how, in simple terms, just how worse things would have been for the country.
Billions pumped into a failed bank by the goverment and nothing to show for it except recordings of the bank executives laughing at the rest of us, c'mon.

lkionm

It would have been economic suicide to not bail them out or gaurantee the deposits.
We probably paid too much but it was probably a little bit hard to pin point how much bad loans they had since a lot of their investments and loans are scattered among other banks in the world.
If we didnt bail them out no other country would have given us a loan or no company would have invested in us since most of the banks would have to close and you would lose your money. This would lead to massive instabilty in the economy and there would probably be massive deflation making and massive job losses.

So the country would have gone bankrupt and we would be living rather poorly for a long time as the government is getting no money and any money it can borrow has a massive interest rate to be paid each year which will lead them to borrowing more money to pay off the interest rates, probably at that point the IMF and world bank would have taken over our economy like they did in asia in the 90s.

We would have probably cost the EU economy a bit as well as it would have led to instabilty among other countries and this would affect the exchange rate of the euro to the dolla and the yen.


Its a good question but we can speculate just like those in 2007 could speculate about the future when there was no major problems perceived globally.

dd972

I'm no economic whizz but have always suspected that the 'empty ATM' scenario was a myth and a ruse to scare people into bailing out a mess not of their own doing.

lkionm

K.Flyer wrote: »

Maybe at the Anglo ATM, but why the rest of them.

People would have taken their money out and the bank only holds about 10% of your money and uses the rest to create loans and what not. Thats how they make money and why they want your deposits and why some savings are so hard to get to.

Also why you have a limit of how much you are allowed withdraw in a day. Banks lend each other money to cover their reserves which is the cash they keep for our daily use.

Your money isnt sitting in a filing cabinet in the safe just gathering dust. Its out working.

R P McMurphy

onemorechance wrote: »

I think there was a fear that the same thing would happen as with the Northern Rock bank in the UK where people were queueing up to empty their accounts.

Or even worse, chaos like in Argentina!

At the time, the bank guarantee (100k deposits) given by the Irish Government was wholly praised internationally as a great move; this was of course before it became known that the banks had lied about their liabilities.

The guarantee on deposits was never the problem

K.Flyer

Yes I kniw most of our finances are not physically in the banks. But that does not stop me using my Visa or Visa Debit card to obtain goods and services.
My point being with a limit on withdrawing cash, it would not have stopped me dead in my tracks.
I believe the eurocrats did their fare share of scare tactics in order to show that the euro was stable

seamus

Europe in general would have been in a big pile of ****, which has pretty recently been admitted both by our government and governments in Europe.

The problem is that banks don't collapse in isolation. They cause a cascade because the banks are lending to eachother. So if bank A owes €200bn to bank B and bank A goes under, then bank B has lost €200bn and may itself fall into ****.

The banking system at that time was in a very precarious position where everyone had loaned huge money to everyone else, so a big failure of one bank would leave everyone in the ****. Anglo just took this crap one step further and rather than borrow money from someone else, they started borrowing money from themselves to inflate their share prices and balance sheets.

This had to end badly eventually, the only problem being that Anglo had also borrowed money from lots of other people. If Anglo had been let go to the wall, AIB would definitely have gone, and probably PTSB and most of the other. BoI would likely have survived but it would still be in serious ****. Like I say, these things cascade - AIB also owe billions to other banks around Europe. AIB goes down and those banks start toppling too, and the banks they owe money to, and so on and so on. What's the outcome? Well nobody knows. If enough banks fail, then people begin to have no faith in banks, they rush to take their money out, except their money only exists in computers, the economy grinds to a halt, business can't operate without cash, people start panicking about feeding their families, turns to riots, civil unrest, revolution and possibly war.

The main problem is that we didn't really need to prop them all up; only the ones which had any possbility of surviving. As we've learned, Anglo was screwed, and they knew it, but they lied to the Government and convinced them Anglo could be saved and was worth saving. AIB would still have been a big cost to prop up, bigger than Anglo, but allowing Anglo to collapse wouldn't have caused a run on the banks. If AIB collapsed, people would panic.

If we ultimately said, "Fnck this, let them collapse", I think Europe would have stepped in to prevent the cascade from happening. But there would be big questions to answer as to why Ireland as an EU member state was happy to gamble with the economic stability of the entire EU.

goose2005

dd972 wrote: »

I'm no economic whizz but have always suspected that the 'empty ATM' scenario was a myth and a ruse to scare people into bailing out a mess not of their own doing.

Of course it was. In any case, a few days or weeks of shutdown might have been exactly what was needed, rather than just pretending everything's normal.

K.Flyer wrote: »

IF... Big if..
They had let Anglo fall and worked with the rest of them, or none of them, can anyone show how, in simple terms, just how worse things would have been for the country.
Billions pumped into a failed bank by the goverment and nothing to show for it except recordings of the bank executives laughing at the rest of us, c'mon.

Property values would have fallen even more. And Ireland is ruled by those who own land, houses and shops, nothing happens that would seriously harm their interests unless it absolutely has to.

Wabbit Ears

If we had let Anglo fail many others would have collapsed also. The risk would be to high for any foreign investors or banks saving them like what happened with Bank of America and Merril Lynch post Lehman brothers. Our banks would not have been saved, one by one they'd have fallen and the UK banks would have run like hell.

If this had happened the creditors would be ruthless in clawing back debts, There would have been none of this not paying your mortgage and still owning your house, it would have been GTFO and up for auction.

The little people with current, savings etc would lose everything they had in the bank with no recourse.

The country would not be able to borrow money so social welfare and gubberment employees would simply not be paid beyond what was actually in the coffers.

Huge numbers of government employees, bank and financial services people would have lost their Jobs. Associated business would fall with them.

The doll queues would be massive and futile for many as there is no money to give them.

lkionm

K.Flyer wrote: »

Yes I kniw most of our finances are not physically in the banks. But that does not stop me using my Visa or Visa Debit card to obtain goods and services.
My point being with a limit on withdrawing cash, it would not have stopped me dead in my tracks.
I believe the eurocrats did their fare share of scare tactics in order to show that the euro was stable

I am guessing you meant to qoute me and not yourself.

Your Visa isnt paper money and funds are just being transferred from one account to another, so all that changes is a number on the account. This will affect their reserve ratio which is the money they have in reserve at the bank compared with the money they should have. They can just borrow from another bank to meet this ratio for a little bit, but that is more affected when they create loans and they get fined when they go below the line.
Lets say you were to withdraw your money with cashback from tesco and they didnt have a limit, you effectively pay into their account and they give you the money that way if that makes sense?

Speisekarte

Speisekarte wrote: »

Can you explain what it means for an economic system to fail?

It's failing because the debts are still growing faster than the growth required to repay those debts, this is despite of near zero interest rates at the central banks.

The only reason the system hasn't collapsed is directly due to "Quantitative Easing" AKA money printing to fill the holes in the banking system caused by inadequate growth in the real economy.

If you want an example of an economy that is in the process of failing to the next level, look to Egypt!

goose2005

Wabbit Ears wrote: »

If we had let Anglo fail many others would have collapsed also. The risk would be to high for any foreign investors or banks saving them like what happened with Bank of America and Merril Lynch post Lehman brothers. Our banks would not have been saved, one by one they'd have fallen and the UK banks would have run like hell.

That's exactly what happened. The UK banks have already left. The Irish banks have already collapsed.

If this had happened the creditors would be ruthless in clawing back debts, There would have been none of this not paying your mortgage and still owning your house, it would have been GTFO and up for auction.

And who would buy it?

Huge numbers of government employees, bank and financial services people would have lost their Jobs.

*begins to tune world's tiniest violin*

Associated business would fall with them.

already falling

The doll queues would be massive and futile for many as there is no money to give them.

already happened, every cent of a dole cheque is an IMF/EU/ECB loan

lkionm

goose2005 wrote: »

Of course it was. In any case, a few days or weeks of shutdown might have been exactly what was needed, rather than just pretending everything's normal.



Property values would have fallen even more. And Ireland is ruled by those who own land, houses and shops, nothing happens that would seriously harm their interests unless it absolutely has to.

They had to pretend everything was normal or it would screw up the euro exchange rate and create instabilty and create panic if people knew the truth.


Oh this is one for the conspiracy folks, the lads in the Eu central bank do not have to take minutes of their meetings and everything is done behind closed doors. They meet every month to chin wag about the economy and inflation and how it has been a very naughty boy

K.Flyer

lkionm wrote: »

I am guessing you meant to qoute me and not yourself.

LOL "Facepalm"

lkionm

Deleted User wrote: »

It's failing because the debts are still growing faster than the growth required to repay those debts, this is despite of near zero interest rates at the central banks.

The only reason the system hasn't collapsed is directly due to "Quantitative Easing" AKA money printing to fill the holes in the banking system caused by inadequate growth in the real economy.

If you want an example of an economy that is in the process of failing to the next level, look to Egypt!

Following on from this, debt growing faster than growth leads to more debt and higher interest rates, meaning we never pay off debt and it keeps going higher and higher and interest getting bigger and bigger.

Quantative easing is being done now by Japan and this devalues the currency and leads to inflation and we have to stick to 2% inflation per year form one of the Eu treaties we signed years ago. This is why they central bank changes interest rates, to affect inflation, not to give Mary more money or to take her money away from her. They dont even know Mary.

If we failed we would be padded due to the Eu but we would always be a poor country for the next 100 years paying back loans with no money to run the country.

Wabbit Ears

goose2005 wrote: »

That's exactly what happened. The UK banks have already left. The Irish banks have already collapsed.

One bank collapesed in a controlled manner after recieving tons of money to pay its debts to the other banks. This is nowhere near the castestrophic domino collapse had they simply been allowed to fail.

And who would buy it?

They would have been sold for whatever they could get. Three fiddy for example, but kidding aside if something is being flogged cheap enough there will be buyers and even if there were no buyers your house is gone, not yours no more, out on your arse.

*begins to tune world's tiniest violin*

Huge unemployment like that also has a cascade effect.

already falling

Nowhere near to the same extent. Buisness have trouble getting credit but i fthis happened that woudl simply not be an option, at all. None. No money. There would be no money.

already happened, every cent of a dole cheque is an IMF/EU/ECB loan

Which we would not be getting if we had allowed the banks to fail.

NuckingFacker

lkionm wrote: »

It would have been economic suicide to not bail them out or gaurantee the deposits.
We probably paid too much but it was probably a little bit hard to pin point how much bad loans they had since a lot of their investments and loans are scattered among other banks in the world.
If we didnt bail them out no other country would have given us a loan or no company would have invested in us since most of the banks would have to close and you would lose your money. This would lead to massive instabilty in the economy and there would probably be massive deflation making and massive job losses.

So the country would have gone bankrupt and we would be living rather poorly for a long time as the government is getting no money and any money it can borrow has a massive interest rate to be paid each year which will lead them to borrowing more money to pay off the interest rates, probably at that point the IMF and world bank would have taken over our economy like they did in asia in the 90s.

We would have probably cost the EU economy a bit as well as it would have led to instabilty among other countries and this would affect the exchange rate of the euro to the dolla and the yen.


Its a good question but we can speculate just like those in 2007 could speculate about the future when there was no major problems perceived globally.

I don't agree with your premise. At all. The EU would have had to act to maintain the Euro, anglo and it's bondholders could have GTBF and a smaller deposit guarantee scheme could have been implemented.

The financial markets have the memory of a goldfish and there's always new "Investors", i.e gamblers, ready for a fresh punt at a profit. It's all moot now anyway, they goofed, we're paying and I doubt the goof was an accident.. Loads of people did rather nicely out of it all.

Anyone doubting this need only look at those speculators who chose to go Bankrupt in the U.K. Most are getting back up and running with new backers/banks. Money has no memory, it just chases the next opportunity.

K.Flyer

Ok. so why do some people keep refering to Icelands experienve and how would it have been so different for us if we had of done as they did.
I know they are still not in the clear, but by some accounts they are doing better than we are. Or is it a case that their "bubble"was not as overinflated as our was?

NuckingFacker

K.Flyer wrote: »

Ok. so why do some people keep refering to Icelands experienve and how would it have been so different for us if we had of done as they did.
I know they are still not in the clear, but by some accounts they are doing better than we are. Or is it a case that their "bubble"was not as overinflated as our was?

Their bubble was even bubblier. Just look at kaupthing and their massive exposures. GTBF usually works wonders. It just takes a lot of guts and confidence, somthing our esteemed leaders lack in spades.

lkionm

NuckingFacker wrote: »

I don't agree with your premise. At all. The EU would have had to act to maintain the Euro, anglo and it's bondholders could have GTBF and a smaller deposit guarantee scheme could have been implemented.

The financial markets have the memory of a goldfish and there's always new "Investors", i.e gamblers, ready for a fresh punt at a profit. It's all moot now anyway, they goofed, we're paying and I doubt the goof was an accident.. Loads of people did rather nicely out of it all.

Yes they would have and we would have been bailed out but at a much higher cost of the IMF taking control of our finances and cutting everything until it balanced. They are not running for re election. The euro would have stayed with us going bust and leaving but that would be worse for us.

Our bonds would be worth dirt and no one would invest or buy dirt bonds no matter how wishful thinking it is to think sure someone will buy it. No one will invest in an economy for years until it is stable. Investors like stabilty, you dont see many sub saharan economies getting invested in.

Curly Judge

Anglo would be the first to go.
If it came at an inopportune time and PTSB and Irish Life had their money with them on the famous B & B basis they would follow suite and so would a lot of the private pensions.
AIB would be next and B of I would survive at best as a sort of useless hulk.
If the collapse spread to Europe, [there is no doubt but that it would spread to the UK] we would now hold the unenviable title of wrecker of the European experiment.
Runs on the banks were avoided and I think that no one should underestimate the level of social unrest such runs would cause.
The panic rising in the breasts of a population worried about losing everything they have worked for is better imagined than experienced.
Given the rocks we had run on to by the time of the guarantee, the government probably had no choice. Thats why I think we should focus on the mistakes made on the lead up to the crisis, rather than on the crisis itself.

lkionm

Curly Judge wrote: »

Anglo would be the first to go.
If it came at an inopportune time and PTSB and Irish Life had their money with them on the famous B & B basis they would follow suite and so would a lot of the private pensions.
AIB would be next and B of I would survive at best as a sort of useless hulk.
If the collapse spread to Europe, [there is no doubt but that it would spread to the UK] we would now hold the unenviable title of wrecker of the European experiment.
Runs on the banks were avoided and I think that no one should underestimate the level of social unrest such runs would cause.
The panic rising in the breasts of a population worried about losing everything they have worked for is better imagined than experienced.
Given the rocks we had run on to by the time of the guarantee, the government probably had no choice. Thats why I think we should focus on the mistakes made on the lead up to the crisis, rather than on the crisis itself.

Heh.

Lets just bring some after hours decorum in here please folks

Busted Flat.

yoloc wrote: »

Just as the title suggests. Where would this country be if we had of told the banks to GTF and not bailed them out. TBH im not very clued up on all this stuff that goes on concerning it but one thing i do know is that we are up **** creek.

I understand that the property market did need correcting but as a whole, would the country be a happy place to live in now or would we still be seeing mass's of people emigrating, mass job cuts etc..

Who would you think would have had the guts to do just that. Name your party that would have had the intelligence to have done that.

onemorechance

R P McMurphy wrote: »

The guarantee on deposits was never the problem

It was the problem. The Government could never actually come good on it's guarantee of 100k so they had to ensure that the banks did not fail, i.e. they had to give them money to cover their debts.

We could have ended up in a situation like Northern Rock had they not guaranteed the deposits and a situation like Argentina had they not paid the banks debts.

camel jockey

We'd still be running a massive deficit just like we are now since we would still have the same massive public sector pay bill.

There probably would have been less impetus to do something about it though, so we would probably be overspending even further.

So much for Croke Park and Haddington Road. Increments for all, I say.

mad muffin

One letter and six months...

Ha!

Who's laughing now? Not us :mad:

UCDVet

The day-to-day life of the peasants is largely unaffected by the turmoil experienced on the crown. We just like to think it is.

If we were part of the UK - what would change? Not a lot. A few laws and the tax system would be slightly different. If we were part of Canada or the US or Australia - day to day life for an average person would not be impacted in the slightest.

Bailout or no bailout the 'fake' economic steam that was driving the country was all gone. Times were going to be tough, politicians were going to keep making a fortune and we're going to see all sorts of increased tax burden.

UCDVet

UCDVet wrote: »

The day-to-day life of the peasants is largely unaffected by the turmoil experienced on the crown. We just like to think it is.

If we were part of the UK - what would change? Not a lot. A few laws and the tax system would be slightly different. If we were part of Canada or the US or Australia - day to day life for an average person would not be impacted in the slightest.

Bailout or no bailout the 'fake' economic steam that was driving the country was all gone. Times were going to be tough, politicians were going to keep making a fortune and we're going to see all sorts of increased tax burden.

You're obviously not in the construction industry, the one sector that was absolutely decimated as a direct result of the down turn. Granted it grew to an abnormal size during the boom, but the collapse has been devastating to the individuals involved.

The fallout has reduced the spending power of the vast majority of the population.

Nailz

kneemos wrote: »

I would have been on a flight from South Korea to San Francisco...lucky.

The airline was South Korean, but was that flight not from Taiwan?

scamalert

As someone stated there is a section in every agreement with a bank that personal accounts are protected up to 100k,so like someone said they manipulated stats and borrowed from themselves,how is no one in prison in that matter then ? as i see if government didn't bailed them out,they would had to go into government reserve to repay the ones who were protected.
as for atm s being raided by people who were afraid that could possibly happened,until situation would stabilize.
But i think biggest problem they faced wasn't bailing this particular bank,but consequences of all irish banks failing,ripple effect,as at that time every bank was lending money 300-400k euro to people with low credit rating and earning rates.So in fact situation could been a lot worse.As eventually most banks would dried out in couple days time,no one able to lend them as no one would trust Irish banks anymore,government would been depleted of most reserves to bail out people instead,thus leaving country and all counties,councils dry all budget would have to be cut to bits,and new taxes impended to try to compensate whats little would be left.

wil

lkionm wrote: »

Your Anglo money isnt sitting in a filing cabinet in the safe just gathering dust. Its out partying with coke and hookers.

Fixed your bank for you;)


You forget Anglo investors weren't the average nobody in the street. They were big money investors with connections, pull and clout. That's what gave Anglo such blackmail bargaining power over CB and gov.

squod

wil wrote: »

You forget Anglo investors weren't the average nobody in the street. They were big money investors with connections, pull and clout. That's what gave Anglo such blackmail bargaining power over CB and gov.

Well said. Anglo stands apart in this story. It's a story in itself. We shouldn't muddle the different issues. It was perfectly plain that Anglo should never have been touched by the Gov. Maybe some token limited offer, deposit guarantee.


There were a number of issues with that night on Sept 2008.

1. Unilateral decision made in the dead of night without consulting Europe
2. The guarantee of Anglo was either done by mad men or bad men.
3. The other banks should have used the guarantee period to negotiate their' loses. They didn't.
4. Banks were then allowed to muddle their books AFTER the guarantee happened in a efort to secure their debts using us, the taxpayer as their financial backers.

eireannBEAR

dd972 wrote: »

I'm no economic whizz but have always suspected that the 'empty ATM' scenario was a myth and a ruse to scare people into bailing out a mess not of their own doing.

tell that to cypriots. :eek: but still i dont think bailing anglo was right.

R P McMurphy

onemorechance wrote: »

It was the problem. The Government could never actually come good on it's guarantee of 100k so they had to ensure that the banks did not fail, i.e. they had to give them money to cover their debts.

We could have ended up in a situation like Northern Rock had they not guaranteed the deposits and a situation like Argentina had they not paid the banks debts.

The government could have borrowed to pay out on deposits. What in effect happened was the goverment borrowed to pay out on everything to the tune of not 100, 000 per account but millions

We could have ended up with a situation like happened countless times in the states where useless banks ceased trading and deposit holders were recouped

the purple tin

Who knows really? A lot of theories about what would have happened are just guesswork, this is new territory for all of us.

K.Flyer

eireannBEAR wrote: »

tell that to cypriots. :eek: but still i dont think bailing anglo was right.

Was that not slightly different in that the cash was there but the banks would not let them have it?

Phill Ewinn

the purple tin wrote: »

Who knows really? A lot of theories about what would have happened are just guesswork, this is new territory for all of us.

Know for sure that if them two lads on the tape weren't saved by FF and the Greens they'd be in jail right now. We might not think this is serious. You can bet your ass the English and Spanish folk think otherwise.

As for all that money from German banks that lent to Anglo? Jail might have been the safer option for them. Where the hell did that money come from I wonder.

renegademaster

Jester252 wrote: »

Not to different from today.

really? when Ecuador examined it's national debt it found that a large proportion of it was illegal and wiped over half of it with a stroke of a pen

i wonder exactly how much of Irelands debts came from foreign banks through Ireland and back into foreign banks? 60% of our bailout when to Germany alone ffs!!

this sh1t still hasn't fully hit the fan yet :eek:

uck51js9zml2yt

well we wouldn't be singing Deutschland Deutschland ( apologies to Angela.. I don't know the modern version)

onemorechance

R P McMurphy wrote: »

The government could have borrowed to pay out on deposits. What in effect happened was the goverment borrowed to pay out on everything to the tune of not 100, 000 per account but millions

We could have ended up with a situation like happened countless times in the states where useless banks ceased trading and deposit holders were recouped

Retail deposits are nearly e200 billion. While it's 100k max per person, I doubt many people are keeping more than 100k in Irish banks. While those in business will need larger amounts, any private citizen should not be keeping large deposits in Irish banks; we all know that the banks and the Government will put the citizen last when things go wrong.

The central banks has less than e400 million to cover deposits, i.e. 0.2% of deposits.

The Government borrowing to pay out deposits would be far more costly than the borrowing they did to prop up the banks.

It would also be multiple times more difficult, and I would expect impossible, to borrow the money to actually cover up to 100k for each depositer.

The USA is very different economy to Ireland and Ireland could never recoup the depositers at AIB, BOI etc.

Europe could, but they already did what's best for Europe, make sure Irish banks pay their debts to the other European banks.

It was the correct thing to do, but bonds should not have been paid at 100%, and some should not have been paid at all. Ireland was too supplicant in negotiating terms. With the referendum and the fact that there was potential for the failure of Irish banks to take out big European banks, Ireland could have said we'll pay at 80% max; even to pay at 90% the 10% could have meant less austerity and not compounding the recession.

Also with the troikia when you hear the likes of Kenny so proudly stating that he negotiated that Ireland would be allowed to use 50% of the sale of state assests for job creation. I thought that this was one of the most pathetic moments in Irish political history.