Summary
Alone among the leaders of advanced industrial nations, Ireland's two Iron Brians rejected the Keynesian case for a fiscal stimulus to keep the economy moving and set about inflicting a scale of pain from which even the new Tories might flinch momentarily. Since the onset of the credit crunch in mid2008, Dublin has delivered three slash-andburn budgets estimated to have sucked about 5 per cent out of the nation's GDP.
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Extract
Failed by Fianna
Celtic Tiger to Celtic Tories would seem an apt way of summing up the story of Ireland in recent times. From poster child of free-market globalisation everywhere from Hungary to Honduras, the UK's nearest neighbour is now enforcing the most savage cuts in public-sector pay, child benefits and social welfare payments of any EU government. Such is the level of misery being endured by the increasingly bewildered citizens of this little republic that even Brian Lenihan, the man principally responsible for inflicting it, has publicly acknowledged that fellow Europeans are "amazed at our capacity to take pain". The finance minister added, slightly boastfully: "In France ...
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