It seems that our new government is digging its heels in and the rest of the EU (probably Germany) isn’t happy.
So let me put the scenario into perspective. Ireland cannot borrow from the market at the moment, we are apparently going to stay a free market capitalist country, so we will be getting money from there again. What we need is money from the EU/IMF in the interim to get us through the mess we are until we can borrow money cheaper from the market than the IMF. The silly rate we initially agreed to was never going to be paid, the idea was that by making the money available the markets would open up again to Ireland to cheaper cash. That hasn’t happened, so we’ll need more money, and we’ll be taking it at a sensible interest rate. And by sensible I mean a rate that the Irish economy can actually have a hope of paying back. That’s the rational thing to do. And if they don’t give it to us at a sensible rate the precious Euro will collapse. And the longer that the rest of the EU takes to cop on to this the heavier a battering the Euro will take in the precious markets.
The last government may have gone cap-in-hand, the new lot, even if I don’t like them, seem to realise that we have plenty of cards in our hand.