So who's next for financial meltdown? Spain, Portugal and Belgium set to follow Ireland into abyss as debt crisis threatens to destroy the euro
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is involved in the fight of her life (writes Alan Hall in Berlin).
Not against terrorists, the Left, or the French - but in trying to persuade her own people that the euro is worth fighting for.
Increasingly, as Germany bailed out Greece and will now have to dig deep to save Ireland, ordinary Germans are sick of it.
Long sceptical of swapping the mighty D-Mark for the common currency - a survey this year found more than 51 per cent wanted to ditch the euro before the full impact of Greece and now Ireland was known - there is an ugly mood abroad.
Burdened by high taxes, a harsh austerity programme and dwindling opportunities, they are in no mood for new lectures on why it is important to save the euro.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to make an official statement on Ireland’s request for help but the noises from the chancellery are that fear will play a large part in the PR campaign to convince Germans that the currency is good for them.
The word is she will sell up to £30billion worth of aid for Ireland claiming that social cohesion and peace itself in Germany will be threatened if the country doesn‘t cough up for Dublin.
But while she stokes up popular fears, she has plenty of her own. The climate is ripe in Germany now for a rightist party to grab up to 20 per cent of the voter from her conservative CDU on an anti-EU platform.
The recently formed Freedom Party is currently underway trying to do just that.
One caller into Radio Bavaria in Munich this morning said; ‘If our cars and fridges and heavy machinery and chemicals and ships are good enough to be bought around the world priced in euros then they will be good enough to be bought in marks and to hell with the rest of Europe’.
