When the rescue package of Ireland—or was it of the British and German banks?—was announced, the headline in one of Ireland's main newspapers was "Declaration of Dependence." As the centenary of the Easter Uprising is fast approaching, this headline is not without some ironic resonance. Angela Merkel has in effect become the new ruler of Ireland, a kind of 21st-century Henry II, using clout of the financial rather than the medieval kind.  I phoned a friend in Dublin in the way that one phones a friend in a city of 11 million people when there has been a serious accident in which 17 people have been injured, to find out whether he was all right. "Everything's fine," he said. "Just give us time, and we'll get out of this mess. About two millennia."  It's hard to imagine Irish wit cutting much ice with Frau Angela. Assuming a zero rate of interest and no population growth, every man, woman, child and baby in Ireland would have to pay back $250 a year for 2,000 years to clear the debt (the precise figure, by my calculation, is 1,936 years, based on one estimate of Ireland's total external debt, but what is 64 years among friends, or creditors?).  Considering the scale of the debacle, public expressions of anger in Ireland have been muted. Anger bubbles underneath, however, like lava. In a recent poll, about 47% of the Irish public said that they would rather have an International Monetary Fund government than one headed by their own politicians—a figure rising to a majority among 35-to-45-year-olds, which is to say, those who will probably suffer most from the crisis.  But apart from the odd insult thrown at the political class—particularly at members of Fianna Fail, the overwhelmingly dominant political party that is a textbook illustration of the eternal verities of Orwell's "Animal Farm," whose revolutionary porkers became establishment men—the reaction has been remarkable, and impressive, for its moderation.  The moderation is for two reasons, perhaps. The first is that so many people—that is to say, the best-educated, not the inhabitants of the no-hope, heroin-inundated housing projects of North Dublin and elsewhere—fully participated in the party while it lasted and enjoyed it thoroughly.  You can hardly blame them. In a matter of a few years their country went from being one in which the immemorial summit of ambition was emigration or a field with two cows, to being the richest in Europe, far outstripping the old enemy and disdainful occupier, Britain, a magnet for investment and immigration. Irish society was transformed. The century-old Guinness-colored grime disappeared from Dublin, and the bright lights shone. The diaspora returned, and people from all over the world flocked to the country for a better life. For the first time in Irish history, a woman on a bus was overheard to say, "Chinese, Russians, Nigerians: They all look the same to me." (The story must be apocryphal, but it captures something of the spirit of the times.)  The Irish were not the first, nor I suspect will they be the last, to congratulate themselves on their personal shrewdness in having bought a house at the bottom of a market and seeing their wealth quintuple without effort in a matter of a few years. I doubt there is a homeowner in the world who has not hugged himself inwardly when he sees the prices of houses around him rising; and the level of self-congratulation is in proportion to that of the rise in price. Unfortunately, self-denigration is also proportional to the collapse in prices, and so the Irish now feel a deep shame at their all-too-willing suspension of disbelief.  A crowd on the dance floor in Dublin.  Of course the politicians and their cronyism are to blame for the situation, but the population voted for them, not in spite of the bubble they created but because of it. An awareness of this has, to the honor of the nation, limited the vehemence of the scapegoating.  The second reason for the relative calm that prevails in the midst of existential crisis is an awareness that the Irish are not the sole authors of their downfall. As the late and much-lamented Mobutu Sese Seko once remarked, it takes two to be corrupt; and likewise it takes two (at least) to make improvident loans. There is no foolish borrower without a foolish lender. If I were a Marxist, I might call the relationship between them dialectical.  What, for example, is one to say of the role played by the leading British banks? The Royal Bank of Scotland, by itself, extended loans in Ireland amounting to $12,000 for every man, woman and child in the country: loans that would have amounted to $3,600,000,000,000 if applied to the United States? (I think I've got my zeroes right, but mental arithmetic is getting harder these days, what with advancing age and the trillionization of the money supply.)  By comparison, Ireland was only a hobby or sideline for the French banks: Combined, they extended a mere $12,000 per head, the skinflints. En passant, and from my patriotic duty to put the record straight about the ineffable competence of British bankers, let me point out that the Belgian banks are, pro rata, the most exposed to Irish debt.  Shame is, of course, the mirror image of pride. If I were Irish, and not personally threatened with imminent penury, I would retain in my heart a small corner for the siren-song of pride, that so small a nation as my own had played so important a role in history, laying bare for Europe as never before the choice in front of it, of total break-up or the pax germanica.  I mean no disparagement of the Germans by the latter, however. It was not something that they sought. Rather it was something thrust upon them by their own diligence, industry and constant application of intelligence to the real rather than the virtual economy; and by their willingness to get-rich-slow, which was in such marked contrast to some other nations that I could name. Ireland is a morality tale, but not just for itself.
The bailout means the end of the party in Ireland, with the Germans stepping in to clean up the mess. By Theodore Dalrymple