The bank bailouts made very little sense, the biggest toxic bank, Anglo Irish Bank, was not a retail bank. They specialised in property financing. Letting them go under would not have resulted in the Irish Government having to cover huge amounts of deposits. The current majority party (Fianna Fail) has a history of connections to property developers and this connection is what a lot of people though spurred the saving of Anglo. Now more information is bubbling up about the exposure of European banks to Anglo and the other Irish banks. Europe (especially Germany) wants this mess cleaned up because if the Irish Government drops the guarantee then their own banks will have a huge hole in their finances. These were essentially risky investments made by foreign banks that the Irish taxpayer is now being forced to pay back.

Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank were profitable (extremely so in the context of the Irish economy) and if kept in government hands would eventually make back their losses. Anglo made it's profits on the back of the property bubble, not something that will be repeated any time soon.

This is the perspective of an Irish economist on the debacle: http://www.ronanlyons.com/2011/01/18/the-irish-bank-sandwich...