With market attention focused on Greece in the Autumn and Winter of 2009–10, and in the absence of clarity on the likely loan losses of the Irish banks, the sudden stop was somehow deferred. However, these conditions changed.
The scale of the embedded bank losses began to crystallise as the larger property-related loans were purchased at a market-related “longterm economic value” by the Government-created asset management agency NAMA. That the Government would have to meet either a large recapitalisation bill or an even larger cash call on the guarantee became clearer in the third quarter of 2010.