The 'Celtic Tiger' roars again

Ireland's growth rates resemble its glory days a decade a go.

Andrew Van Sickle
By
published
in News

In 2010, Ireland almost went bust. Now its growth rates are back at levels reminiscent of the days of the Celtic Tiger' in the 2000s. GDP rose by 1.5% in the second quarter of 2014, or 6.5% year-on-year.

"Pretty much everything is heading in the right direction," as Philip O'Sullivan of Investec Ireland points out. Exports, crucial to Ireland's GDP, rose by 10% in the first half, while investment is now growing by 15% a year.

Even consumers, shattered by the collapse of the credit bubble, managed to increase spending by an annual 1.3% between April and June.

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It helps that Ireland's two top trading partners, the US and the UK, are expanding at a healthy clip, while the euro has weakened and southern European borrowing costs have fallen as the threat of a euro break-up has receded.

But it's not just down to "the luck of the Irish", says the FT. Ireland has "taken the toughest of choices".

Large wage cuts in both the public and private sectors have restored competitiveness. The government also forced the banks to come clean about their losses, paving the way for a recovery in lending.

With public debt still at a "dangerous" 120% of GDP and a huge private debt burden, Ireland isn't out of the woods. But it is certainly peripheralEurope's poster child.

Andrew Van Sickle
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.

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