Professor O'Sullivan says Irish bankers and banking supervisors had too close of a relationship.

Ireland was known as the "Celtic Tiger" in the nineteen nineties. Its educated, English-speaking workers and low taxes appealed to foreign companies. Its economy grew quickly.

But foreign investment and low interest rates inflated a property bubble, raising prices to levels that could not be supported. Bad property loans hit hard at Ireland's main banks. Unemployment is over thirteen percent.

Ireland's bank bailout and government spending have expanded this year's deficit to more than thirty percent of gross domestic product. This is ten times the EU limit for a deficit in relation to the size of an economy, as measured by GDP.

But John James at Pace University in New York state says there is little the European Union can do. Germany and France want to give the European Commission more power over national budgets. For now, rescues by the European Central Bank and other lenders are the only answer in a debt crisis.

EU officials want to complete the Irish aid plan quickly. They want to be ready in case of more bad news from economies like Greece, Portugal and Spain.

And that’s the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. I'm Steve Ember.