The government agreed to enter an EU IMF support programme, with a total size of € The resulting adjustment programme brought additional contractionary budgets (albeit they would have had to be even more austere if Ireland had had to raise market-based funding, compared to cheaper, three-year official funding), public sector pay cuts, further banking stress tests, and more capital injections.
The associated human cost of this was immense. The effects are still being felt today by too many – such as those still directly affected by high levels of personal debt and indirectly by, for example, the dysfunction that still exists in the housing market. The emergency brake applied to housing construction in 2008, is still being felt acutely today.