New Trinity College research finds the Ireland is one of the happiest countries in the world

The sense of fair play is being eroded by the IMF and the EU's insistence that the Irish people pay the debts of privately owned banks to the European banks, especially German banks. The spread of the inherently unfair austerity policies will further erode Ireland's sense of fair play. That said, as some one who grew up in poverty with Irish born-and-raised parents in an Irish-Jewish neighborhood I can never understand why people make themselves unhappy and cannot see the humor in the way we humans operate. ... We were capable of being happy just for being alive and together. I suspect this happiness would have been diminished if our very basic necessities - material, emotional, spiritual - were not being met, but they were met. Today I am happy every day in my old age. I spend almost all my time alone because I feel happy alone rather than mingling with the many doom and gloomers surrounding me. I do enjoy phone calls from equally happy family and other people from my past and I take phone calls from some people when they are feeling miserable and need a kind person to talk to. I have found the people from my background to be very happy people, except for those who have turned into sour, bitter right wingers and uber Catholics (that is,not spiritually oriented kind-hearted Catholics, like my parents and some relatives today, although most most have left the church). My prosperous and rich relatives take care of all their children equally. Even in Ireland my prosperous grandparents had to provide an equal dowry to all their children, male and female, as a way to give them a start in life. ... As for Irish corruption, that corruption is based on making sure that everyone gets something so I can can get a lot more. there's a weird kind of fairness involved, at least that's how many of us from an Irish culture see it. We do not seek perfection, just a rough fairness.

Yet we were ranked as one of the most corrupt countries the other day- 1 and 1 not making 2 here

Hilarious. What colour is the sky in their world. No doubt they used the Delphi Technique to get the desired result. Might be the fluoride in the water too that has so many zombies in Eire at the moment