Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden with bad debts. Brian Lenihan, Ireland’s finance minister, on Wednesday outlined plans to pay Irish banks about €54bn for property loans. That is equivalent to a 30 per cent discount to their book value, although a 15 per cent premium over their €47bn market value. It is his latest attempt to salvage Ireland’s stricken banks. Dublin already owns Anglo-Irish Bank and has 25 per cent of Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland. It is also probably Mr Lenihan’s last chance before going the whole hog and having to nationalise the lot.

But the bail-out is neither popular with opposition parties nor straightforward; chaos erupted in parliament even before Mr Lenihan spoke. The central problem is that nobody knows what the loans are worth. If investors believe that Mr Lenihan has overpaid by buying the loans at too small a discount, Ireland’s fragile sovereign rating would suffer under the increased liability. Bond markets would then take fright. On the other hand, if the discount is too large, banks will have to make good the difference and raise more capital. Property loans are only one problem facing Ireland’s recession-bound lenders.