More on Ireland in this month’s magazine:

Julian Gough on why the Irish should marry their daughters to the IMF

Colin Murphy on Irish migration

Steingrímur Sigfússon, Iceland’s finance minister, had been planning to visit Dublin on 1st December to deliver a lecture to students at Trinity College. The title of his paper was “Iceland and the International Monetary Fund: what lessons for Ireland?” By chance, the longstanding engagement happened to fall a few days after Ireland had agreed the terms of a humiliating €85bn bailout by the IMF and a 16-member eurozone group led by Germany, and including Britain, Sweden and Denmark. In the event, diplomatic sensitivities prevailed, and Sigfússon, clearly not wishing to add to Ireland’s trauma, cancelled his trip. Two years after Iceland’s crisis, Ireland faces a similar nightmare: its banks may collapse, and the government may be unable to make good on its loans from the rest of the world. A recent letter to the Irish Times joked darkly that the title of the EU anthem should be changed from “Ode to Joy” to “Owed to Germany.”

Irish disorientation has not been helped by the offer, in November, of financial help from Britain, the former colonial power—even though the £7bn put forward by Chancellor George Osborne was prompted by concerns that Irish banks could drag down their British counterparts. One Irish MP reported receiving texts from angry constituents warning him not to accept the “Queen’s shilling,” while a friend recently visiting her sister in England was surprised to be offered a discount at the checkout of one London store because she was Irish. “It was as if I needed a…

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