Let's say the worst happens a few weeks after the December budget and Ireland goes into the bailout fund run by Klaus Regling in Luxembourg – the European Financial Stability Facility. Could it possibly get any worse and what would be the cost for Ireland?

Those questions are being unriddled by clued-in commentators from Wolfgang Munchau in the Financial Times to Karl Whelan, the UCD professor.

Munchau suggests that the cost of the bailout to Ireland could be prohibitively more expensive than the annual interest rate that Greece has been paying since May to borrow money for three years from its very own special bailout facility.

The rate for Ireland could be as much as 7% or 8%, he says, because it is unclear what reference market rate will be used by the new EFSF bailout fund to calculate Ireland's big penalty rate.

Whelan, on the Irisheconomy.ie blog, deconstructed the hugely complicated founding articles of the EFSF to question Munchau's assumption that the rate would be as high as 8%.

"Munchau's conclusion that it is 'hard to conceive of a situation where a country would both borrow from the EFSF and live happily ever after' may still end up being correct but I don't think the borrowing rates are as punitive as he has projected," he writes.

Unfortunately, the rate may still be touching the subprime territory of around 5.75%, according to Whelan's calculations. (Spooky note: the market rate for Ireland to borrow for four years was at 4.85% last week.)

Commentators on radio shows who, like taxi drivers, glibly say we might as well embrace the bailout as soon as possible, are failing to get the point: there's no free bailout in a sovereign bailout fund.