Ireland is unique among the PIGS in that it has a structural balance of payments surplus, and that its goverment debt is unsustainable mostly because of the ill-conceived blanket guarantee of their failing bloated banks. They would have had a large deficit in 2009 in any case due to the recession, but without several multiples of GDP in zombie banks liabilities the Irish treasury and central bank would likely be jointly solvent.

I think Greece has only the nuclear option left: sovereign default and issuing scrip. But maybe that's a failure of my imagination.

Keynesianism is intellectually hard, as evidenced by the inability of many trained economists to get it - Paul Krugman