They know not what they do

IRELAND will not be going back to borrow from the markets until 2013 at the earliest, at which time the principle that both debtor and creditor (bondholder) will be obliged to share bank losses will be firmly established.

So why should we do anything to appease bondholders now or ever again? The Government should have told the ECB that if it wants to save (European) bondholders it must put the necessary capital funding into our banks itself.

If the ECB declined (which I doubt) our route to bank recovery was to transfer all deposits out of the existing banks, sequester the bank retail assets and offer the remainder to the creditor bondholders/ECB in an examinership scenario, they would then own the existing loans, other assets and above all the bank debt.