No troika farewell party invite for Barroso, but we have the hangover

SOME people don’t react well when they’re not invited to a party. Just before Christmas, the European Commission president, Juan Manuel Barroso, a former communist from Portugal, kicked the people he held responsible for Ireland’s economic problems — the Irish.

We brought it on ourselves, he said, and we’re not grateful for the help, despite our recklessness threatening the stability of the economies that bailed us out. So if we think we can tap Europe, to repay us part of the money we used to save the banks, well, we can sing for it.

Barroso’s message, at a press conference eight days ago, was straightforward. There were efforts to spin it afterwards, his press spokesman not ruling out the possibility that we might be compensated for the capital invested in saving the banks. But it was nowhere near as convincing as Barroso’s words.