Ireland will seek emergency international aid totaling as much as 60% of the size of its economy, dwarfing the Greek bailout, to save its banks and bolster its finances.
Ireland will ask for about 95 billion euros, or $130 billion, from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, according to an estimate by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
UniCredit SA put the package at as much as $116 billion, and Deutsche Bank AG estimated it at $123 billion. The $150 billion aid package for Greece in May was the equivalent of 47% of its gross domestic product.
The cost of bailing out Ireland will be inflated by the price of shoring up its banking system, which Goldman puts at almost one-third of the total request. The bursting of a real estate bubble in 2008 pushed Irish banks close to collapse and plunged the country into recession.
Ireland moved toward accepting a bailout under pressure from EU and European Central Bank leaders to stem a threatened contagion across Europe's so-called peripheral markets.
Ireland would tap the $1 trillion European Financial Stability Facility set up in May as a financial lifeline for the rest of the euro region after Greece needed an emergency bailout of three-year loans from the EU and IMF.
