I don't think we should have actually done that

Irelands being pinned to the collar by the ECB to get rid the bonds they issued as part of their prom note last year due to the fact that the ECB are worried €25 billion of prom notes into sovereign debt equated to monetary financing, something that is forbidden by article 123 of the EU Treaty. The Central Bank of Ireland agreed last year to sell the bonds “but only where such a sale is not disruptive to financial stability”. The weighted average life of the long-term government bonds is 34 to 35 years, compared to seven or eight years for the promissory notes. ECB chief Mario Draghi said at the time that while the ECB had taken note of the transaction it would be reviewing the arrangement as part of its monitoring of monetary financing in euro zone countries.

But our banks are different

The ECB determination to subject the euro zone's largest banks to the same, rigorous checks is being tested, with countries lobbying for their banks to be treated differently and lenders asking for their workload to be eased.

Almost two weeks after the ECB published a 285 page manual spelling out how it will examine banks' trillions of euros of assets, lenders in Germany and Spain are leading the charge for special treatment, while banks across the eurozone have asked for changes to the process to make it less onerous.

The central bank is carrying out the wide-ranging tests so it can start with a clean sheet when it becomes the euro zone's banking supervisor in November. The tests are designed to banish lingering investor doubts about the health of the region's banks that have kept their valuations consistently below U.S. peers.