Are the Irish selling out?

"Irish rebels fought for independence during World War I,
boasting they served “neither King nor Kaiser.”

Ireland may now have to do exactly that
 to qualify for a bailout partly funded by both Britain and Germany.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen is edging toward accepting a rescue package
that may threaten the country’s low-tax policies and put voters on the hook
to repay loans the central bank says may be worth “tens of billions” of euros.

For critics of Cowen’s...national pride is at stake.

Cowen has “squandered” independence
for a “German bailout with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor,”
the Irish Times newspaper said yesterday.

...The Irish government estimated rescuing the financial services industry alone
might cost as much as 50 billion euros ($68 billion).

“As an Irishman who has lived all his life in the Irish Free State,
it is painful to think that we’ll be handing over our sovereignty,” said Bill Phelan, 77,
 who worked for the state-owned Electricity Supply Board before his retirement.
“I regret that all I have worked and saved for may be crumbling under my feet.
I worry for my children.”

...Cowen said Ireland has no reason to feel “ashamed or humiliated.”
“There is no question of loss of sovereignty for Ireland,”
he told reporters in Dublin yesterday.

...A request for outside help is acutely felt in a country
that gained independence in 1922 after a series of failed uprisings against the British Empire.

The most famous came in 1916 at the height of World War I,
when republicans hung a banner from Dublin’s Liberty Hall reading:
“We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland.”

...Austrian Finance Minister Josef Proell said Nov. 17
that he will want to discuss Irish company tax as part of any rescue package.

A day earlier, he warned Greece it might withhold Austria’s part of the country’s bailout
...if the government in Athens doesn’t comply with financial targets.

EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn
said ... that Ireland won’t continue as a “low-tax” country."

Dara Doyle and John Fraher