European lifeline - Patience may pay off in debt war

The weekend communiqué, 307 words issued at 4.20am on Sunday by eurozone leaders, suggests that the distant, flickering light at the end of the tunnel is real.

It confirms that our Government’s commitment to patiently playing the long game, to first re-establishing Ireland’s credibility and stability despite many loud, testosterone-fuelled suggestions to the contrary, may pay dividends by achieving an agreement on reducing our impossible debt burden.

Though nothing can be signed off until after the October summit it is, in normal circumstances, unimaginable that the debt-reduction assumption central to the statement will not be made real. If, and “if” is always the pivotal word in these challenging times, the noose of Ireland’s private bank debt becomes — comparatively — a tolerable set of handcuffs then the Government will have been vindicated and the road ahead will seem a little less forbidding.