A toast to the luck of the Irish, second time around

[barryqwalsh]

In the history of the State, we’ve been collectively lucky exactly twice. The first time was roughly between 1995 and 2001, when the stars in the firmament of history seemed to be aligning almost magically. It wasn’t pure luck, of course: long-term investment in education, the positive effects of women’s liberation, social partnership in its sensible phase, the peace process and improvements in infrastructure all contributed to the boom that transformed the Irish economy in those years. Where we got lucky was that all of these things just happened to coincide with the greatest-ever expansion of global trade, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening up of China and the turbocharged takeoff of information technology. All of our vicious circles suddenly became virtuous.

And we blew it. We didn’t know our own luck.



Fintan O’Toole: A toast to the luck of the Irish, second time around

 

[barryqwalsh]

The second time the State got lucky is right now. The Government will claim, of course, that Enda Kennycharmed Opec into lowering oil prices, that Michael Noonan bluffed the European Central Bank (ECB) into cutting interest rates to almost zero, that Eamon Gilmore schmoozed Barack Obama into stimulating the US economy instead of giving in to the hysterical clamour for austerity, and that Joan Burton has been manipulating exchange rates from her secret beehive bunker on Skellig Michael.

But all of the things that have rescued the Irish economy from disaster are strokes of fortune: cheap oil, cheap money, the ECB’s belated reversal of policy, the strength of the US and British economies and the weakness of the euro. Luck, by definition, is about the things you can’t control and, for us, those things have turned out spectacularly well.

So do we know our own luck this time?


Fintan O’Toole: A toast to the luck of the Irish, second time around