Ireland's embattled banks need to be bolstered by an extra €24bn (£21bn) — some €13bn of which needs to be used to prop up the troubled Allied Irish Banks (AIB).
It takes the total bill for repairing the hole in the banking sector caused by the bursting of the Irish property bubble to €70bn.
Two questions:
a) How long will it be before civil disobedience breaks out at the cost of this being imposed on ordinary people in Ireland, all to save banks elsewhere?
b) How long is it before Ireland defaults?
The answer is, of course (b) is not long after (a) but I see (a) as distinctly likely now. Why not? What have the Irish to lose any more? This debt cannot be repaid. It is €23,000 or thereabouts a head.
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on (A) Civil Disobedience is the name of a pub in Dublin. Civil disobedience breaks out every weekend – and many times on monday and tuesday nights. It’s a national sport.
on (B) my guess is 2-3 months?
The Guardian’s reporting on this is pretty weak. I think the people have been brainwashed to the point where they just want to pay and get it done, they are shutting out all the details. Which is unfortunate.
The Irish economist who appeared on Channel 4 News last evening put it at somewhere above 30K Euros per person, Richard, although that might have been for every working person in Eire. Having read your other posts on this (accounting standards and the big four)I have to say that the enormity of the situation and the utter madness of a system that not only allows this but actually facilitates it in the first place is almost mind-blowing.
Kimbjo makes the point that the people of Ireland just want to ‘pay it an get done’ but honestly I cannot see that happening for years. Meantime the country is effectively bankrupted and with population migration and slow or no growth I just can’t see it has the resources to get out of this without a radical rethink of its response.
But Osborne uses the example of Ireland as the reason why we must do austerity too!
@Carol Wilcox
I know. It sounded pretty rubish and ignorant of the facts when he first started parroting it, but now it’s pure insanity.
Ireland remains a very conservative country. The young (graduates and non graduates) are leaving in droves. 60k are estimated to emigrate this year. This is like a safety valve for the establishment in Ireland and this has always been the case. There will be no civil disobedience unfortunately.
@Carol Wilcox
@Ivan Horrocks
When Osborne first said we would suffer the same fate as Ireland it was, rightly, pointed out by ‘the left’ that this was nonsense, because our economy is nothing like theirs. Sadly, this means that ‘the left’ shouldn’t now be arguing that government policy will mean we suffer the same fate as Ireland… because our economy is STILL nothing lime theirs.
Ireland is a lesson that all sides can learn something from.. but it is not, and never was, a comparator to be bandied about by anyone looking to ‘sell’ policy ideas for the UK.
@dubblespeak11
I hope you’re wrong, Ireland has revolution fresh in the blood of the people there today, but I fear you may be right.