Brinkmanship in Dublin – but at least Bill Clinton says Ireland will get through its crisis

The Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan may (or may not, depending which report you read) have been jeered by international investors and bond traders on a conference call last week, but he is
widely admired by his own business community, both for his determination to steer a straight course through the banking crisis and property crash that have overwhelmed the former ‘Celtic
Tiger’, and for his personal battle with pancreatic cancer.

The Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan may (or may not, depending which report you read) have been jeered by international investors and bond traders on a conference call last week, but he is
widely admired by his own business community, both for his determination to steer a straight course through the banking crisis and property crash that have overwhelmed the former ‘Celtic
Tiger’, and for his personal battle with pancreatic cancer. I rang two friends in Dublin this week and garnered matching sets of compliments for Lenihan — but very different
perspectives on his strategy. Conor O’Kelly, a bond market veteran who runs the NCB securities group, told me Lenihan’s statement that the cost of bailing out Irish banks could rise to
a breathtaking €45 billion was a ‘very high-risk exercise in brinkmanship’: a head-on challenge to the bond market, which has so far given Lenihan the benefit of the doubt in the
form of a slight narrowing (from 4.6 per cent to 4.2 per cent) of the premium for Irish paper over the German benchmark for euro-sovereign debt. But it’s early days, O’Kelly says, and
Lenihan’s four-year plan, to be announced in November, could hit serious domestic political turbulence. If it does, those jeering investors could still throw Ireland in the basket with
Iceland and Greece.

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Julie Burchill

Will I ever pee again?

My second call was to David McRedmond, who runs the television channel TV3.