When I was a kid, Ireland was known as the battered, windswept poorhouse on Europe’s western edge. It was the place where life was simple, money was scarce, and ambition mostly migrated abroad because it couldn’t afford to stay home. Ireland was the economic backwater of non-communist Europe, an almost tragic footnote of hard times and resilient misery.
Then the country changed. The “Celtic Tiger” emerged as a shiny marketing slogan that somehow grew flesh and teeth. With aggressive tax baiting, corporate courtship rituals, and a suspiciously enthusiastic welcome mat for funky multinational headquarters, Ireland managed to reinvent itself. On paper—always a dangerous phrase—it even became richer per capita than Britain, the old imperial motherland. Success, at least in statistical form. A model to emulate? Perhaps. Or perhaps a warning label disguised as a miracle story.
Because Ireland also demonstrates what happens when sudden wealth sedates the brain. In record time, Irish politics went from practical, grounded, and shaped by tough experience to deranged and ideologically intoxicated. Somewhere there should still be people who remember the hunger, the austerity, the unforgiving years. But memory evaporates quickly when it’s drowned in prosperity and fantasy. Nothing fades faster than the recollection of pain once you’ve bathed it in fresh, warm unicorn elixir. And that’s the problem. When wealth removes consequences, madness grows. Ireland will likely drift back toward the place it crawled from, because reality always comes back to collect—especially from those who think they’re done paying. And if they imagine the old trick will work one more time… I wouldn’t bet on it.