That ticking noise you can hear is the countdown to the publication on Sunday of the results of a comprehensive assessments of 130 bank balance sheets across Europe.

This vast exercise – said to involve 135,000 loan files and 6,000 scrutineers – has two purposes.

One is to restore confidence about the health of European banks at this time of sluggish growth across the region. It’s what many describe as a “deep dive” into the financial sector to separate the strong from the weak banks.

The other is to pave the way for the new Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which will take direct control of financial supervision across the euro zone in November. Its establishment comes a full six years after the crash.

The SSM wants all the skeletons out of the closet before assuming responsibility for this motley crew of financial institutions.

A similar pan-European review took place in 2011 by the European Banking Authority, but this lacked credibility as some of the institutions that passed were later to implode.

There will be failures this time around, with speculation that banks in Austria, Germany, Italy Greece and Portugal could fail the examination.

In Ireland the focus is on AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB. The process is shrouded in secrecy but it appears that all of the banks have a good idea of where they stand. It is understood that the precise details will be provided to them on Thursday to give them time to prepare their responses to the announcements from the ECB at the weekend.

The body language of the senior people around AIB and Bank of Ireland suggests that they are not in crisis mode. Ergo, they will be on the right side of these results.

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan indicated as much last week at a press briefing post the announcement of Budget 2015.

According to Bloomberg, Noonan said he had a “fair idea“ of how the assessment was going and that AIB and Bank of Ireland “are very secure in capital terms”.

Permanent TSB is an altogether different case. The clear expectation is that it will fail the adverse scenario in the stress test element of the assessment. It has not been helped by the fact that it hasn't yet received approval from the European Commission for its restructuring plan. This has affected certain assumptions that have been applied in the stress tests.

A lot of work has been going on behind the scenes to put together a plan to deal with this situation.

Formally, PTSB will have two weeks to submit its proposal to Frankfurt and nine months to raise its capital.

The reality is that the groundwork is already being laid and the bank is likely to outline its capital-raising intentions on Sunday following the ECB’s announcements.

A year ago the State would have been the only port of call for PTSB to raise new capital but a lot has changed in the intervening period. The country’s exit from the EU-IMF bailout programme and a stellar GDP performance this year have changed perceptions with the result that international investors and capital markets are once again willing to open their wallets to Ireland.

The State has already given PTSB a €2.7 billion bailout, including €400 million in Contingent Capital Notes (CoCos). The CoCos can be converted by PTSB for capital purposes, which would immediately ease the burden on its chief executive Jeremy Masding to raise additional funds from markets.

Deutsche Bank has been on the clock for a number of months to test the market for interest in providing capital to PTSB and its work is likely to continue out to next July, the cut-off point for new funding to be secured.

In the event that all else fails the Government would presumably follow its money and plug the gap in its capital buffer and keep the institution afloat.

Again Noonan gave a hint on this last week. “If they require extra capital they’re strong enough to get the small amounts of capital they require in the markets, so we don’t see any risk to taxpayers.”

All will be revealed just before lunchtime on Sunday.

Six years after the global financial crash, let’s hope that this draws a line under the crisis in Ireland.

@CiaranHancock1