Ireland's fiscal sovereignty was hanging by a thread late on Tuesday evening (16 November) as eurozone finance ministers announced that EU and IMF overseers were to head to Dublin to supervise preparations for a fresh round of cuts for the next four years to ensure that they are as deep as necessary.
The non-eurozone UK is reportedly under pressure to contribute to any deal, given the heavy exposure of British banks in Ireland, particularly RBS, although Prime Minister David Cameron has recently voiced support for the idea of bilateral financial support for its one-time colony. Shares in UK financial institutions have slid over the past week as a result of the tumult.
The drafting of a new four-year austerity budget, which looks to ratchet up the level of cuts - bringing the total level up to €20.6 billion since the end of 2008, or 13 percent of GDP - has for all intents and purposes been removed from the province of the nation's elected representatives and passed over to a troika of officials who will head to the Irish capital on Thursday to take a magnifying glass to the document.
For more: EUobserver / EU-IMF troika heading to Dublin to oversee budget preparations
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