Ireland Bailout May Not Be for Ireland but For European Central Bank

I was wondering about this bailout as well and it seems there might have been some naked self-interest involved on the part of the EU.

It’s likely that the European Central Bank has large exposures to Irish debt. The ECB has been quietly buying European sovereign debt since May—although it won’t say exactly what debt it is buying. The purpose of the purchases is to stabilize the debt market and provide liquidity to the economies of Europe. The stabilization effort, at least, appears to have failed. Further purchases of sovereign debt in a renewed stabilization effort threaten to become inflationary—essentially the ECB monetizing sovereign debt in Europe. An official bailout may be an attempt to ward off monetization and inflation. 

So basically they are bailing out Ireland's counter parties to prevent them from losing value on Irish Debt. This would mess up the ECBs balance sheet if they suddenly show a loss due to Irish debt losing value.

It would also kill the balance sheets of many giant EU banks who probably have billions in Irish bonds on their books. I wonder if these banks would fail their stress tests if Irish debt lost even more of its value going forward? It would be interesting to see what the EU does about Portugal and Spain as their debt starts to lose value.