The advice the Irish government took during the Celtic Tiger period became universal advice across the world media: do what Ireland is doing. In the Celtic Tiger period, any Irish politician that went against globally-propogated Celtic Tiger mythos would have been ousted for being a backward culchie that wasn't with the modern answers.
Experts in the country aped the happy talk about Irish de-regulation they read by bigger experts on TV for years. Self-congratulation on bubble pumping was all you got in Irish media. Condescension was the reward doled-out to doubting Thomases asking questions about a country that had become too expensive for normal Irish people to live in it.
The basic human instinct for self-determination and survival was replaced by trust in a compelling Celtic Tiger cartoon. Irish politicians should have been more heroic, intellectually, to see through the trickery. They were unable for lots of reasons. Some were probably bought. Others probably threatened. Most just believed.
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