Controversial act may yet be challenged

Up to Wednesday night, the term “Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Bill” meant only one thing — a €34bn noose around the collective necks of the country’s taxpayers.

But now we know it as a piece of legislation that could go down in history as actually beginning to loosen the bonds of indebtedness that have been strangling the citizenry.

Or as the authors of the bill, now an act, put it: It is “to provide for the orderly winding up of the affairs of IBRC to help to address the continuing serious disturbance in the economy of the State”.