Some years ago I had been researching the great outsourcing work being done out of Ireland. Being culturally closer to the US, it was easier though costlier to work with Irish providers. Ireland had beaten unemployment from 16% down to 3.9% and Government incentives including low taxes had major companies like Pfizer, Dell, Microsoft, Google doing a lot of work from Ireland. In fact, with no tigers in Ireland it came to be known as “Celtic Tiger” given its huge growth and success like the South East Asian “Tiger” countries in early nineties.
[Note: This post is originally published Nov 22, 2010 updated for formatting only May 18, 2021]
All the economic boom apparently resulted in a housing bubble that burst alongwith the mortgage meltdown in the US and the Lehman collapse. What exactly happened is not entirely clear but it is clear that the IMF and the European Union are trying to bail out the Irish banks and trying to shore up confidence. Things seem to be working but the lessons from Ireland’s boom to bust story need to come out really clearly. This would help many countries and industry sectors to avoid similar problems.