Germany needs a bailout

Glencore are not an EU company. Where will the coal be mined that you compared to Poland?

No idea exactly but they have 16 coal mines in Australia, 2 in Canada and 3 in South Africa. probably Australia given it's closeness to Japan.

Who do You think got us into debt?

Then I would think that Poland won’t be pissed off.

No energy generation is reliable.

Coal and gas plants go offline all the time.

Ireland is about 30% powered by wind on average this year.

.Yawn.

Come back to me when you have read more than "Conspiracy theory for Dummies"

@Cork Exile

You know that was not the only reason we "took a hit" there? Some sort of hit was unavoidable one way or another because of how "we" had mismanaged the countries economy, just as a hit is unavoidable for Germany now because they misjudged Russia and Putin, and put too many energy eggs in the same basket. One's behaviour has consequences (unless you are a child perhaps), there won't always be some hero there to step in and save you from them, or a clever dodge [oh we'll just not pay the debts] to avoid them.

My main point in the post was that the "hit" we would have taken could have been even greater if there was no Troika and we did not receive that bailout, or perhaps received a smaller bailout with a tougher programme of reforms (due to a lack of participation from likes of Germany), even if you think the terms we got were too harsh.

I don't think we did too badly, given what could have happened to Ireland when we consider the history of some other countries with similarly large crises and resulting IMF bailouts (see South America - hyper inflation, banking collapses, massive political instability and violence).

As regards blaming the "gombeen govt." or it all being "private deals" we then got publically punished for, no one forced that easy money on us or made us waste it the way we did (e.g. bidding up prices of houses and land, paying inflated wage increases). Irish people generally loved it all on the way up + rewarded the politicians for it by repeatedly re-electing them. The money was flowing, and that was all that mattered. I lived that period, people were like pigs in shíte and most thought the boom and the cheap money would never end, at worst it might slow down a bit. The naysayers and negative ninnies did not get much of a hearing.

I hate going over this history again, but it was also our own government that put us on the hook for some of the worst of the private behaviour by initially trying to protect likes of Anglo Irish Bank (afair it was not at all a normal bank, or systemic in the sense of AIB or BOI or Ulster or the building societies etc) and people invested in it + connected to it from the full consequences of their decisions.

Germany are certainly not going to "get off" here anyway just as we didn't. They will suffer and already are suffering and are being criticised [what is happening here on this thread and elsewhere on this site?] and I'm sure refecting on past policy in the light of what is happening in Europe now etc. rather than playing "poor innocents". That seems to be a figment of your imagination.

My other point was that it is not as though the part of the EU that is not as dependent on Russian gas can just watch the Germans suffering from the sidelines and finger wag + say they did it to themselves, now they must pay the price. The more their economy suffers, the worse it will be for everyone else in the EU also. This is quite similar to "bailouts". Germany and the like could IMO have decided to be even harsher, protect their own countries/economies and their banks from the economic fallout in Ireland/Greece/Spain/Portugal etc., pulled up the drawbridge + just finger wagged.

That would have meant the end of the current Euro (in the sense of some countries like Ireland could have been forced to exit) and massive damage to the entire EU project which would of course have rebounded back politically and economically on Germany, and the others.

Finger wagging at the Germans and others in the East of EU who've relied on Russian energy and refusing to help or making the cost of help exhorbitant and crippling, will rebound back on them in the end as well. So with that in mind, it is not hypocrisy at all IMO for Germany to expect some kind of support and burden sharing here.

In some ways a lot of this discussion is irrelevant to Ireland. We are not connected to EU energy or gas networks to share supplies of either, we have no LNG terminal to import our own gas (which would be taking from LNG imports elsewhere in the EU). We have no ability to store any gas or hedge against problems this winter. Our practical ability to assist is close to 0, we can't even help ourselves really.

I suppose we could have some agreement between EU-UK (?) where they would supply us with some % less gas they direct our way currently, in order to boost the supply from Norway/North Sea into EU networks but that is hardly going to amount to very much and requires trust and negotiations in a situation where EU-UK relations are quite poor and deteriorating. I think that reality has been recognised by Ireland being exempted from what is happening at EU level as regards burden sharing.

(edited a few spellings...)