In September 2008, the Irish government gave a blanket guarantee to the six main banks in the country’s financial services sector. No strings attached, no overseeing, no transparency. In effect, a blank check was handed to organisations low on funds. This decision, which obviously fell way short of outright nationalization, was disastrous; it tied the state to the debts of the banks, and eventually resulted in a total collapse of Ireland’s economy which in turn necessitated the intervention of the "Troika" — the IMF, ECB and European Commission. The Guarantee attempts to tell the story of how this fiscal catastrophe came to pass, identifying the main players and their motives along with a crash course in the vagaries of international finance. Colin Murphy adapts his stage play of the same name, and Ian Power takes up the directorial reins for what is intended to be a tense display of political mismanagement and disregard for social consequence.