My earlier post is just the tip of the iceberg, it's downright criminal what happened there. You still got a better deal than Greece though.
I don't know anything about Irish domestic policies but even disregarding past experience of how the troika handles things, just looking at the situation Ireland was in I highly doubt you could have gotten a better deal. Brussels and Frankfurt easily could have and would have let the whole country crash and burn just to make a point.
Cowen said in an interview that a few days after the ECB council decided in Nov 2010 it wouldn't sustain the credit granted to Irish banks media outlets everywhere started reporting that Ireland decided to apply for a bail out package which of course hadn't happened until then. Not even two weeks after that Trichet sent this letter to Lenihan dictating the terms of the package which by then was made necessary by the very reports and subsequent hysteria the ECB had caused themselves.
It's basically a blank cheque for the troika to allocate Ireland's domestic budget. It's not a coincidence that both Lenihan and Varoufakis lamented the blatant and crass disregard for any democratic decisions or even just some willingness to compromise. The balance of power is extremely lopsided here, there's no way anyone could have anything to prevent this outcome bar of course not getting in this whole mess in the first place.
