“If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” Never can the punchline from the well-known Irish joke have been more apposite. The Celtic Tiger has collapsed under a mountain of bad debt. This raises questions about where responsibility for financial excesses should lie. That is an issue in the Irish election today. It should be one for all of Europe tomorrow.
Where is the Irish economy now? According to the International Monetary Fund, over the past three years the cumulative fall in real gross domestic product was 11 per cent, in gross national product 16 per cent and in real domestic demand 22 per cent. The rate of unemployment jumped from 4.6 per cent in 2007 to 13.3 per cent in 2010. The ratio of general government debt to GDP soared from just 25 per cent in 2007 to 95 per cent in 2010.
What caused this calamity? As Philip Lane of Trinity College notes: “There was a genuine Irish economic miracle, with very rapid output, employment and productivity growth during the 1994-2000 period.” Without entry into the eurozone, this might have petered out. But the fall in interest rates increased the risk that a credit-fuelled property bubble would emerge. So, indeed, it did.