Niall O'Dowd: Death of Ireland's Celtic Tiger not all bad

I'm waiting for the Bankers and all the white collared type to be busted and punished to the full extent of the law. The Bankers were playing the Fiddle while the whole economy collapsed under them. They doth protest too much.

@jflanagan - dude, correction - it was your GOP that bailed out Wall Street in the fall of 2008. Remember, TARP,George W. Bush and Hank Paulson? Let's not have this Faux News re-write of history slipping in here, please. And recall also where the deficit culture came from - as Dick Cheney said to Paul O'Neill - "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter". We're still recovering from that mentality here.

While the once powerful Celtic Tiger is now no more than a purring pussy cat, there is little chance it is going to slide into the sea, as many doomsayers seem to infer. The ould place has been here many a time before and will, as before, emerge stronger for it. As for worrying about immigrants besieging the country, this is a misguided argument and wholly wrong. Many of the Poles, for example, who arrived to help fill an employees shortfall have shoved aside their pints of stout and announced "Do Widzenia!" We live in a global world and, therefore, should not fret over the arrival of people from elsewhere. Immigration isn't the problem in Ireland; sound economic policy is.

The problem is that the Irish are left with one permanent legacy of the Celtic Tiger years. I'm talking about the fact that the demographic make-up of the country is irrevocably changed. 20%, maybe more, of the people living in the 26 Counties are not Irish. This is a pathologically high figure, higher than the Plantations of the 17th century which are still posing unresolved problems. It's as if the USA had accepted 70 million immigrants in less than a decade. And, to make the demnographic change even more violent, note that the huge numbers of foreigners are not distributed over all age groups, like the Irish population is. The immigrants are concentrated in the 20-40 age group--guess what, the age that makes most babies! Hence it's probable that one baby out of every four born in Ireland is not ethnically Irish. This is expeceted to continue, till within a couple of decades the Irish will be an ethnic minority in their own ancient homeland. What Cromwell and the English couldn't do, the Irish are doing to themselves. The days when we could talk about typical Irish names, or talk about someone as looking very "Irish", or of someone having an Irish sense of humor, those days are just about gone. The future of Ireland is unknowable--probably mostly bad--but one thing is sure. Ireland as the unique homeland of the Irish, the only such place on earth, is gone forever. What we will get in its place is some kind of multinational mass of people with no common history or culture, a country a bit like a giant airport terminal. You can already see the future in downtown Dublin, and it ain't pretty.

Like a breath of fresh air, coming in from Ireland. I can't wait to go back there, again!

"Bernie Madoff has nothing on some of those shysters." Really...now how many of those wanker banksters or toblerone slum housing developers got away with 60 billion plus which then was disappeared into a MOSSAD black hole for purposes too nefarious even to want to contemplate. There are still a lot of smooth talking hustlers in Ireland and even though the mangy Celtic tiger turned out to be more hungry hyena but never ever underestimate the NY mafia that screwed and hustled US taxpayers and got clean away with it AND THEY are still running this economy and the Fed! Now that's chutzpah, amigo!

My 80-plus years-old Irish cousin reminds me that back in 2004 when I first met him in County Louth, he said that the Celtic Tiger was a paper tiger. He predicted that there would be problems down the road.

I heartily agree with every observation and opinion from Niall. I rectenly returned from an extended stay around the country and find that "every day" folk acknowledge the difficulties and down turn in their financial future, however, the Irish spirit is alive and well.

This is not the first time Ireland has had a boom and then a bust. Back in the late 70s they were blowing their money as if there were no tomorrow. I don't know when it all fell apart recently, but in 2007, the last time I visited my homeland, the cafes and pubs in Dublin were bursting at the seams every night of the week. All those beautiful people--where do they get the money, I wondered, and at Irish prices? But it's no different from here in America on the East Coast. Any night of the week I can go to downtown Stamford, Ct. and the good life seems in full swing, despite the very real recession. Sometimes I feel as if I am the only one who has to budget for a meal at a restaurant, or peruse the day (or two or three day) old produce shelf at the supermarket.

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"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy" as the great W B Yeats once said !!!! So very true.... Great article....some people dont like to hear the truth and some simply love to blame the Government !

A for Niall Dowd....the perspective is right. From 1989 to 2001 I watched the changes taking place as we took trips during those years to see family and friends, plus getting to know the country we love. We know where are roots are and where we come from which is something not all "Irish" can say. We have not been able to return since 2001 as we retired and don't have the income we once had. We are hoping to return in September (after the tourist season) and hope that some of the prices have been adjusted, especially the air fares. I agree with Niall, prices must be adjusted to what they SHOULD be and not what the vendors want. Those days are gone. It is like that here in the US,but it will take longer for these ideas to finally take root. If the world would adopt Niall's thoughts, I think we would all be better off. Right now it is basically the rich and the poor. there is no more middle clase per se! Let's all pray that the power that be see the light and begin to make life more livable for all of us! Thank you. Momaloney Boston, MA

The fall of the Tiger certainly has cured the immigration problem. The last time I was in Ireland I had to speak Polish to get my breakfast, Latvian at the hotel desk, and Serbian just to get a pint of Guiness! Hopefully they've all gone home now.

CAnnot believe this article for its lameness. Cheerleading in the graveyard. That simpler life has not yet hit. Abject ruin is predictable among the wee folk, while the Government (both FF and FG) continues to collude with their cronies in Banking/Financial sector. As Forest Gump might say, "Sh** happened, and more is on the way." Thank God for Greece, as it keeps Ireland out of the spotlight. With current Government policy,its answer to the crisis, virtually all of its revenues will be used to pay of its international DEBT for decades to come. There will be NO inward investment in the Republic, as long as the currency remains in euros, where salaries and wages supersede those in the US! (The country has the highest paid police force in the world!) Property values could decline to 10& of peak values. Deflation will kill the economy Casual visitors to Ireland ought not be blinded by the mass state of DENIAL among the public. Next time look at the plane on which you are returning to the US. They're not Latinos, but those young Irish tourists, are also hoping for relief for undocumented/illegal aliens.

The Tiger is now in China.. good luck with that! I really like the Celtic Salmon, but then I never metaphor I didn't like!