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Ireland has gone through a radical transformation from the Celtic Tiger years to the IMF-EU bail-out of 2010. This paper presents evidence of the priority infrastructural gaps that will inhibit economic growth, based on interviews with a broad spectrum of key stake holders. The paper explores the factors for industry locating within a region and highlights the issues associated with national, regional and local planning, and how these can potentially inhibit or aid industrial development within a region and thus the region's growth. This paper demonstrates serious short-comings in the broadband connectivity to all areas outside Dublin and the need for the basic requirement of water quality and capacity to be urgently addressed. It reinforces the need for investment in Ireland's physical infrastructure to be aligned with a long-term strategy and vision, with infrastructural investment decisions based on a holistic, numbers-based evaluation methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a stylized budgeting and growth framework to analyze the effects of various shocks on public finances and growth. The framework is applied to the case of Ireland, where recently these shocks have played an important role. Ireland was strongly affected by the global financial crisis and the collapse of a housing price bubble caused a deep recession and budgetary instability. We focus on the impacts of primary fiscal balance shocks, growth and interest rate shocks on budgetary sustainability and growth. A scenario analysis of budgetary adjustment in the short and medium run under alternative hypotheses is carried out to assess Irish fiscal sustainability and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on aspects of the water war in Ireland. Topics discussed include the emergence of protest movement against water charges in 2014 associated with the resistance of the community to water meter installation, bailout and austerity in the revolution, and the foundations for the water charges campaign.

As part of the 2010 EU/IMF economic adjustment program or "bail-out," the Irish Government was required to undertake billions of euros in cuts to social protection spending over a three-year period. These have been implemented in subsequent budgets, resulting in increased levels of poverty and social exclusion. In light of these impacts on social rights in Ireland and other Member States, this article argues that the outcome of such Union legislative measures should be subject to some degree of rights-based scrutiny. It examines how, in the Hartz IV decision, the German Constitutional Court ruled that an attempt by the German Government to pass legislation that significantly cut a range of social welfare benefits breached the fundamental right to a subsistence minimum under the German Basic Law. Drawing inspiration from the approach of the German Constitutional Court, the article argues that the two elements of the German Basic Law which grounded that decision--the right to human dignity (Article 1(1)) and the social state principle (Article 20(1))--are both present within the Union Treaties as a result of changes occasioned by the Lisbon Treaty. The article advocates that the European Court of Justice should discover such a right within Union law and use it as a tool to analyze the impact of future cuts mandated by Union institutions on the economically disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic crisis of 2008/9 was felt more acutely in Ireland relative to most other countries and culminated in the international bailout in 2010. Given the economic collapse, Ireland provides an ideal case study of the link between wealth collapses and movements in variables such as health and well-being. Using nationally representative samples of older people collected before and during the crisis, we show that mean net assets fell by 45% between 2006/7 and 2012/13. In spite of this massive fall in wealth, measures of health and well-being remained broadly unchanged. However, expectations about future living standards became less optimistic. The results tend to support the findings of other recent studies that recessions do not have widespread negative effects on health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland's status as one of the most materialist states in Europe in the 1980s helped motivate the need for economic growth. Ireland's export oriented policies emphasized foreign direct foreign investment. Thus, Irish growth in the 1990s was based on integrating the Irish economy in the world market to satisfy the demand for a higher quality of life even if this compromised Ireland's long struggle for independence and autonomy. Ireland's dependence on international markets became even clearer after the financial crash. The Irish government required a bailout from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund to cover the huge debt exposure the Irish government had assumed after guaranteeing bank debt. Hence, materialism served to motivate the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the cost to the Irish state of its bailout of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC). The paper discusses the IBRC's balance sheet, its ELA debts to the Central Bank of Ireland and the promissory notes provided to it by the Irish government to pay off its liabilities. Options for reducing these costs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs that about euro-area bailouts which was first requested by Greece in May 2010, followed by Ireland in November 2010 and Portugal in March 2011. It also informs that euro-area leaders created a temporary bailout fund, European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in May 2010. It further informs about a permanent bailout fund, European Stability Mechanism (ESM) which was to be introduced in 2013 but was prevented from becoming operational after lawsuits filed in Germany.

The article examine the international politics of Ireland's European Union (EU)/International Monetary Fund (IMF). The author analyses the bailout from an international relations perspective to gain a deeper insight on the nature of the political pressures that forced the negotiators to compromise over the design and content of Ireland's programme of financial support.

The paper explores a question raised by the 2011 Irish election, which saw an almost unprecedented decline in support for a major governing party after an economic collapse that necessitated an ECB/IMF ‘bailout’. This seems a classic case of ‘economic voting’ in which a government is punished for incompetent performance. How did the government lose this support: gradually, as successive economic indicators appeared negative, or dramatically, following major shocks? The evidence points to losses at two critical junctures. This is consistent with an interpretation of the link between economics and politics that allows for qualitative judgements by voters in assigning credit and blame for economic performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Republic of Ireland was the first country in the eurozone to adopt a neoliberal infused ‘austerity budget’, and the ill-judged state bailing out of a number of reckless banks and associated financial institutions is costing billions of euros. In late 2010, as the crisis deepened, the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank provided a ‘bailout’ package that resulted in further punitive public spending cuts and the eradication of national sovereignty. This paper maintains that the present crisis is more than a mere economic crisis, but can be viewed as a series of interlinked ‘conjunctures’. Tracing the connection between the historical and the contemporary, the first part of the discussion will explore six thematic components relating to the structuring of the Irish state. These are identified as: a ‘class rule state’; an ‘authoritarian state’; a ‘confining state’; a ‘censoring state’; a ‘discriminatory state’; and a ‘state within the state’. These six dimensions provide a contextual underpinning for the second part of the paper, which focuses on the crisis in child welfare and child protection services and dwells on the shambolic performance of the Health Service Executive (HSE), deficits in the ‘care’ system and the HSE failure to furnish reliable data on the deaths of children in contact with social workers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the 31st Dáil election in Ireland, held in March 2011, and examines how economic problems within the country contributed to changes in the political majorities. Particular focus is paid to the shift in parliamentary political power due to seats lost by the Fianna Fáil party and the election of Fine Gael member Enda Kenny as Taoiseach, or prime minister. Seats gained by the Labour Party and Sinn Féin party are discussed and the details of a government bailout agreement between Ireland and the European Central Bank are presented.

The article presents a discussion on the Irish general election of 2011, in which the political party the Fianna Fáil lost the parliamentary control, between four scholars of political science and Irish history. The role that Ireland's economic conditions, following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 and the 2008 bank bailout, had on the attitudes of Irish voters in the 2011 election is discussed. An overview of the Irish political party the Fine Gael-Labour's placement in elections is provided.

The EU/IMF €85 billion rescue of the Irish economy required Ireland to address critical problems in banking and bank regulation, the public finances and structural reform. Ireland must also address weak expertise in economics in the public sector and in banking, rent-seeking, regulatory capture, moral hazard, lack of accountability and failures of corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the financial crises of several member nations of the European Union (EU). These are Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, which are grouped together under the acronym PIGS. The crises have led to concerns about the future of the Euro as a currency union. An overview of the history of the EU's development in the wake of World War II is presented, and an analysis of the EU's response to the PIGS crises is presented. Greece is described as the most financially irresponsible, and its economy may be difficult to fix.