Ireland’s crisis was a banking crisis emerging from macroeconomic imbalances and the overheating of the real estate markets, which ultimately brought the public economy to its knees. By autumn 2010, Ireland’s economic state was bleak to begin with, but it soon turned even more horrendous. This was due to the weekend meeting in mid-October by German and French leaders in the coastal town of Deauville, which decided to set private sector involvement as the mainstay of the EFSF, repelling even the last investors from Ireland. Market literacy was in short supply that weekend. In December 2010, an 85 billion euro conditional financial assistance programme for Ireland was decided, also to recapitalize banks after the dead wood had been cleared.