I haven't looked at IReland's economics in forever, objective canadian observer. Lets see if i can find the cause.

Ireland has been in a recession for over a year. Realistically Ireland has been in a depression since covid started, but there seems to be some funny numbers coming out of ireland trying to hide the depression to make it just a recession?

Looking at their central bank's balance, Ireland the country effectively went bankrupt in October 2006. This is when their government hit up against the EU limits on spending. This is when the politicians had to either increase taxation or reduce spending. They chose neither.

Their country never recovered from the bankruptcy in 2006. So when covid hit they were unable to afford a response to it.

Ireland's 'stimulus' package was dissimilar to north american countries. Only months into covid they were urgently working toward getting people back to work. Ireland effectively prove to me they know their country is about to have a major depression in summer of 2020, not because of covid but because of their status going into the crisis.

They have low unemployment comparable to the 2000-2006 era.

But looking at 'participation rate' they increased by about 2%. This is very good for ireland. Infact, this is still trending upwards. The rate exceeds population growth and >10% youth unemployment. So this is the elderly returning to work. From an economic point of view this is a good thing, from a social point of view this is a disaster.

Interest rates are shocking. After 2006, when they went bankrupt, they started increasing rates? That's literally the opposite of what you want to do. 2008-2009 they abruptly reversed course. So in 2005, they were at 2%, in 2009, they were at 1%. Going the wrong direction here would have lasting damage on Ireland.

In 2011, they reversed course and started raising again. Which was very short lived. They screwed up bigtime for a second time.

2015, they had dropped to 0.05%. Then in 2016 they were at 0%.

So from 2016 to 2022, they were basically taking money from retirees to attract money from probably mostly out of country investors. Did it work? Yes, about $100 billion of $ came in and out of ireland on a regular bounce. Foreign investors basically pulled money out of ireland, reducing the wealth of ireland. Their actions delayed their depression, great success economically, but huge failure socially.

And in 2022 they started raising rates they stopped this and pulled the rug out from their housing industry.

In about 2030, Ireland will have to have -1% or worse rates.

Looking at household debts, it's shockingly low. Basically the young of ireland have decided against Ireland? That's shocking. Very south american like.

IReland in 2022 dropped their income tax from 48% to 40%. This too will be beneficial. I expect they will be required to reach into the 30% range by 2030.

Ireland's social nets have decreased about 60% over the last 30 years.

GDP per capita? Ireland is 4th most wealthy country in europe? No. That's not true at all. We shall see where they drop to after they are forced to deal with this ongoing depression. I estimate they will be poorer then portugal in reality.

>The only problem is nobody agrees what actually went wrong.

Seems 100% obvious to me what went wrong. It seems 100% obvious that the government completely understands what went wrong and that it's 100% their fault.

Lets in fact name names. Looking at the dates of major mistakes of government policy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fianna_F%C3%A1il

Ireland's conservatives are largely speaking the cause of these problems. In fact, what it looks like is that they were causing problems intentionally to be the solution. They seem to be doing this because they are being elected on bad economy because the opposition are ideologically against the economy.

It appears that the next election they will suffer defeat to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinn_F%C3%A9in#Ideology_and_po...

If they keep this ideology when attempting to solve their depression. It's going to go extremely poorly for ireland.

>Here's what I would do as emperor of ireland.

Immediate balanced budget amendment requiring all governments to balance their budget.

~32% income tax.

withdraw from minimum corporate tax treaty, threatening to withdraw from a great deal more. Ireland-exit and Brexit alliance? Probably inevitable at this point?

Elimination of minimum wage.

Unionization on all non-irish owned corporations.

-2% interest rates temporarily.

eliminiation of all new taxes created in the last 20 years.