I was asked to provide a summary of the decline of the Celtic Tiger, detailing the building industry collapse, corruption in the banks and the bloat of the public service. Does any such summary (2-4 pages) exist?
It exists in one sentence. This is what happens when you let a FF government rule for too long, you get robbed, raped and blamed and then you get the bill for it.
Absolutely goddamn right.
That is true, and blindingly obvious to anyone who is familair with the situation. However, I was looking for a summary to explain to a foreigner how we came to be in this mess, and am too lazy and inarticulate to do it myself.
What a load of auld bollox, each and every one of us can take some part of the blame for the demise of the celtic tiger.
People got greedy and carried away… you can’t blame everything on FF!!
When they turn up at my door canvassing, this is going to be my response.
Thanks spqr64 - you summed it up.
The Celtic Tiger was over hunted by Fianna Fail and their cronies as soon as they realised it existed. They’ve been selling the tigers fur (property) and bones (lax regulation) around the world while claiming to be nursing a healthy population of cubs. It is now evident extinction of the species occurred some time ago. The cubs it has emerged, died of gastric blockage. A direct result of bloating (public sector) due to poor handling. A repentant Bertie was heard to proclaim from his ivory tower, with a tear in his eye “we’ll never see da likes of dem again”.
The end.
There’s a thread elsewhere on the 'pin that discusses this Economist article. You might need to add the ire back into ireland though if the level of invective included doesn’t work for ya!
Ah FFS, one simple truth is stretched out to 230000 posts on this forum. Timewaste this or wha?
I’d draw your attention to the dictionary description of the word “govern” which is what “governments” are supposed to do when elected by and for the people.
gov⋅ern /ˈgʌvərn/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [guhv-ern] Show IPA
–verb (used with object)
- to rule over by right of authority: to govern a nation.
- to exercise a directing or restraining influence over; guide: the motives governing a decision.
- to hold in check; control: to govern one’s temper.
- to serve as or constitute a law for: the principles governing a case.
- Grammar. to be regularly accompanied by or require the use of (a particular form). In They helped us, the verb helped governs the objective case of the pronoun we.
- to regulate the speed of (an engine) with a governor.
Notice anything missing from the current shower in power?
Im not saying FF didn’t contribute to the demise, however there needs to be a bit of collective responsibility here and a lot less finger pointing
Bull you’re living up to your name. I will point my finger squarely at the self interested money grabbing FF parasites and continue to do so until they have the good grace and decency to step down having abjectly failed in their mandated task of governing this country.
Stating the obvious but Wikipedia has a good synopsis of the recent irish economic rollercoaster
Integrity? Honesty? Transparency? Honour? Ability? A glimmer of intelligence? Leadership? Accountability?
This is too easy ask me a hard one 
There is no credible alternative, are you telling me the blueshirts wouldnt have us in the same or worse situation? And there is NO way enda could steer us out of this. Galls me to say it but FF are the only option at present
Morgan Kelly’s “The Irish Property Bubble: Causes and Consequences.” presentation from back in January is worth a look:
irisheconomy.ie/Crisis/KellyCrisis.pdf (PDF) - Adobe Acrobat required.
Im saying it.
FF are to blame for the lot of it.
FFS Bull. FF are a fucking busted flush. ANY alternative is better at this stage. Enda Kenny or not.
This is why this country is doomed. FFers will continue to vote per their tribal, blinkered traditions. Sure no one coulda done any better. No one saw it coming. International factors. Fucking idiotic. No one could have conceivably fucked this country over any more completely than Zanu FF even if they were trying. But sure no one else can get us out of this…the others would have done the same…
I give up 
Here’s some of the things we didn’t spend money on when we had the BOOM, instead we’re still drinking our own shit down in Ennis when the weather isn’t appropriate.
Interconnector so we could have shunted a lot more wind power around. As a result, our wind power is underdeveloped.
Broadband.
Home insulation practices and retrofitting which would have reduced energy consumption over time.
In Ennis and Galway and elsewhere we have had the pleasure of drinking our own feces during the summer because of lack of or poor sewage treatment plants. In fact, the town of Quilty in West Clare only got sewage pipes recently and only because of Gormley. Still, the tools down there all voted FF for years despite threatening them by withdrawing their votes.
Decent public transport in Dublin.
We could have focused on creating a second busy city in the west around Limerick.
Upgrades of our tax, financial and legal system.
We didn’t throw enough money at indigenous industry. (Remember the two young ebay lads in Limerick ??)
We allowed many things to happen that shouldn’t have such as a low-rise commuter belt miles from Dublin. Governance was more like anarchy in fact except the anarchists were crony capitalists, many of whom wouldn’t brook high-rises in Dublin because that would have meant a quicker end of gravy train. Fianna Fáil also bought many elections with crony jobs in schools, VECs, the HSE, the Civil Service and so on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “structural deficit” of 16 billion is now the bill that Fianna Fáil are giving us after the rogering we were given for the last 10 years.
As someone said to me recently, this country was poor all its life up until the middle of the nineties then the New Rich gorged themselves on all sorts of credit (money-lenders are allowed to charge up to 188% interest) so we just haven’t had the exposure to wealth that other countries had - we all became boy racers with our first cars but like many of those fellas we’re speeding up against a wall of debt now.
The galling thing is that many many people saw this coming in the late nineties and early years of this century c. 2003 e.g. Forty shades of red: the Irish debt sentence that could last for life - Tribune but they weren’t listened to and were often derided, in micro and macro.
Which is why the above quote on Governance should have kicked in but didn’t. I somehow blame the EU for not giving us a few Governmental whacks as well but perhaps they did besides the 2007 lacerating we got from the German Ambassador, Christian Pauls. If you are bothered you could look up the archived thread on p.ie, I’m sure you’ll get a flavour of the bullshit stock “anti-patriotic” responses that spill out of the mouths of our countrymen when you mention anything in a cautionary tone.
Give a horse to a beggar and he’ll ride to hell. And come the locals, mark my words, these retards will vote for these shitbags again. 293 FG seats to 302 FF seats in last locals - do you really think this will change ? I’m starting to believe we’re controlled via the water or air like Bollox Jones spouts on about all day - how else could we be so thick ???