Euro Membership and Bank Stability – Friends or Foes? Lessons from Ireland

Hit by loan-losses from a bursting property bubble, the Irish banks were brought to near-collapse, contributing to one of the worst economic downturns of the global crisis. The sharp fall in nominal and real interest rates and the removal of exchange risk from foreign borrowing after euro membership played a part in these events. At the same time, several other countries have got into similar trouble, both recently and in decades gone by, so there is no guarantee that staying out of the eurozone would have prevented something comparable from happening. And the euro provided an anchor as the crisis broke.