Eamon, things are not all right in Dublin!

Last night I reminded older readers of a bit of Python, read here, unhappily this morning as long expected there is absolutely no chance of a Constitutional settlement for Ireland, let me explain: 1. The mainly Anglo Irish Bank debts just announced are presently estimated at 34 billion euros, read here. 2. The Irish Government previously provided an open ended guarantee to meet these debts to save the assets of mostly foreign debt holders. Presumably for reasons of EU solidarity (hahahahahahahahehehehehe!!!!!). 3. The Irish Constitution is over-ridden by the Lisbon Treaty, formerly the EU Reform Treaty and before that the EU Constitutional Treaty. Like every other EU member Ireland now has no constitution of its own. 4. The Lisbon Treaty has no rescue mechanism or emergency support programme for member states in such difficulties as it is a non-transfer union as defined under the Maastricht Treaty under the terms of the Growth and Stability pact that was blown out of the water by France and Germany in 2003. (One post of many on Ironies on this topic is linked here scroll to 12th September 2003). 5. Ireland has thus bankrupted itself to aid the larger banks of the bigger member states and can now do nothing to either pay the debts or like Iceland, restore its competitiveness through devaluation. A new Constitution for the Irish Nation outside the EU and withdrawal from the Euro seems its best hope, unless we see an extraordinary display of EU solidarity from Germany in the very near future which would finally seal the fate of the EU once and for all with the German electorate!