Everywhere needs its unique selling points. Germany is in the centre of a large population and doesn't need to transport stuff by ship and air, Ireland has to compete by cutting down costs to companies. As to the huge amount, yes I think Ireland would have been better just guaranteeing its own citizens and letting Allied Irish fall over. The other banks weren't anywhere near so bad. It had a bank strike for ages once and the economy grew during that time so there's no need to lie down like a doormat for the banks. A proportion of the debt was due to a construction boom which was a large financial bubble but most was nothing to do with Ireland but more to other banks mainly in Europe channeling stuff through Ireland so quite a bit now if anything is Ireland helping prop up America which is just plain stupid. Those other banks know they'd be in very big trouble if the Irish bans fell over and that's why the other countries are rallying around offering loans. They know if anything happened it wouldn't just affect Ireland - in fact some of them could easily be far worse hit.