We conceived blanket guarantee and added to other countries’ woes

How typically Irish. We are the country that created the situation that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus are now in, because we came up with the idea of a bank guarantee.

Thinking if it was good enough for Sweden, it was good enough for us, we lacked the guts to follow through Sweden’s example and do the hard bit of holding the banks to account.

Then, we were the first to blink when the Troika threatened to destroy the economy if we didn’t allow our banks to pass their debts to the Irish taxpayer, while retaining the right to pursue account-holders for debts the taxpayer had just paid off.