Noonan, unlike Oliver Twist, can’t ask Europe for a little more

So, Spain escapes the pain, Greece is let off the leash, but Ireland is still expected to take a good hiding from the EU — why?

Despite Brussels bending over backwards to break the rules for Madrid and Athens, as far as Dublin is concerned EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn reacts to our pleas to ease the bailout burden with a sneer worthy of the one deployed by the Dickensian workhouse master at the cries of a desperate Oliver Twist.

The novel notes that young Oliver could bear his own era of austerity no longer: “He was wracked with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the Master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: ‘Please sir, I want some more’.”