Markets regained some of the huge losses incurred over the past few days as data coming out of the US showed the world’s largest economy continues to recover.

It is unlikely that Irish banks will be able to offload their loss-making tracker mortgages using the ECB’s asset-backed securities (ABS) programme.

ECB president Mario Draghi will announce an asset-backed securities purchasing programme at Thursday’s monthly meeting instead of unveiling plans for fully fledged quantitative easing.

Irish banks will have to prove they can withstand another slump in property prices, a surge in unemployment, and sclerotic growth over a three-year period as part of the EU-wide stress tests later this year.

The European Commission has cited a number of “possible national solutions” to the tracker problem crippling the Irish banking system in its latest report on the Irish economy — ruling out official support from either the ESM or the ECB.