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Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger
Between 1995 and 2007, the Republic of Ireland was the worldwide model of successful adaptation to economic globalisation. The success story was phenomenal: a doubling of the workforce; a massive growth in exports; a GDP that was substantially above the EU average. Ireland became the world's largest exporter of software and manufactured the world's supply of Viagra.
The factors that made it possible for Ireland to become prosperous - progressive social change, solidarity, major State investment in education, and the critical role of the EU - were largely ignored as too sharply at odds with the dominant free market ideology. The Irish boom was shaped instead into a simplistic moral tale of the little country that discovered low taxes and small government and prospered as a result.
There were two big problems. Ireland acquired a hyper-capitalist economy on the back of a corrupt, dysfunctional political system. And the business class saw the influx of wealth as an opportunity to make money out of property. Aided by corrupt planning and funded by poorly regulated banks, an unsustainable property-led boom gradually consumed the Celtic Tiger. This is, as Fintan O'Toole writes, 'a good old-fashioned jeremiad about the bastards who got us into this mess'. It is an entertaining, passionate story of one of the most ignominious economic reversals in recent history.
The factors that made it possible for Ireland to become prosperous - progressive social change, solidarity, major State investment in education, and the critical role of the EU - were largely ignored as too sharply at odds with the dominant free market ideology. The Irish boom was shaped instead into a simplistic moral tale of the little country that discovered low taxes and small government and prospered as a result.
There were two big problems. Ireland acquired a hyper-capitalist economy on the back of a corrupt, dysfunctional political system. And the business class saw the influx of wealth as an opportunity to make money out of property. Aided by corrupt planning and funded by poorly regulated banks, an unsustainable property-led boom gradually consumed the Celtic Tiger. This is, as Fintan O'Toole writes, 'a good old-fashioned jeremiad about the bastards who got us into this mess'. It is an entertaining, passionate story of one of the most ignominious economic reversals in recent history.
250 pages, Paperback
First published November 5, 2009
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About the author
Fintan O'Toole
58 books356 followersFintan O'Toole is a columnist, assistant editor and drama critic for The Irish Times. O'Toole was born in Dublin and was partly educated at University College Dublin. He has written for the Irish Times since 1988 and was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001. He is a literary critic, historical writer and political commentator, with generally left-wing views. He was and continues to be a strong critic of corruption in Irish politics, in both the Haughey era and continuing to the present.
O'Toole has criticised what he sees as negative attitudes towards immigration in Ireland, the state of Ireland's public services, growing inequality during Ireland's economic boom, the Iraq War and the American military's use of Shannon Airport, among many other issues. In 2006, he spent six months in China reporting for The Irish Times. In his weekly columns in The Irish Times, O'Toole opposed the IRA's campaign during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fintan_O...
O'Toole has criticised what he sees as negative attitudes towards immigration in Ireland, the state of Ireland's public services, growing inequality during Ireland's economic boom, the Iraq War and the American military's use of Shannon Airport, among many other issues. In 2006, he spent six months in China reporting for The Irish Times. In his weekly columns in The Irish Times, O'Toole opposed the IRA's campaign during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fintan_O...
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April 1, 2024
The “ship of fools” archetype has been with us since the time of Plato, who in Book VI of the Republic asked his readers to imagine a ship that is being run by a shipowner who is “somewhat deaf and rather short-sighted, with a knowledge of sailing to match his eyesight”, and is crewed by sailors who “are quarreling amongst themselves over captaincy of the ship, each one thinking that he ought to be captain, though he has never learnt that skill”.
Plato’s “ship of fools” allegory – one that the philosopher uses to describe the dangers facing the people of a state that is being run by unqualified people without the necessary political knowledge and skills – is invoked here by the Irish journalist and writer Fintan O’Toole, to set forth his sense of how and why the economy of the Republic of Ireland fell so disastrously from the heady times of the “Celtic Tiger” period of 1995-2008. The “Celtic Tiger” era was seen at the time as a sort of Irish economic miracle; now, in retrospect, it looks more like an Irish bubble.
In his 2009 book Ship of Fools, O’Toole, who has been writing for decades for The Irish Times on topics from dramatic criticism to the Northern Ireland conflict, composes a sort of jeremiad on the topic of How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (the book’s subtitle). In O’Toole’s formulation, the fall of the “Celtic Tiger” could be foreshadowed in the way the “Celtic Tiger” rose – in an atmosphere in which an Irish government formed by the center-right Fianna Fáil party established policies of low taxes and minimal regulation.
It was called, at the time, “the Irish model” for European growth and prosperity, but O’Toole suggests that there wasn’t really much that was Irish about it: “Much of this enthusiasm for the ‘Irish model’ was driven by the neo-liberal Right in the U.S. For Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, Ireland was the living proof that ‘tax and spend’ Democrats were wrong and Reaganism right” (p. 10).
O’Toole is just as interested in correcting misapprehensions regarding the emergence of the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom: “For a start, one of the reasons the Irish economy grew so fast after 1995 is that it had grown so slowly before that” (p. 16). The European Union certainly didn’t regard the economy of the Republic of Ireland as any sort of Celtic Tiger: “The whole of Ireland was declared a disadvantaged area, and the E.U. poured in IR£8.6 billion in aid between 1987 and 1998” (p. 19).
Moreover, there were many ways in which Ireland set the tone for the “Celtic Tiger” boom not through the kind of neo-liberal laissez-faire policies favored by many U.S. conservatives, but rather through active government intervention: “One [measure] was to invest heavily in the expansion of state-funded third-level education” – a measure, O’Toole dryly notes, that “would have caused the average Republican senator in the U.S. to call for an exorcism” (p. 19).
In O’Toole’s formulation the “hands-off” policies of successive Fianna Fáil governments fostered systematic corruption, including massive bank fraud. “Why was nothing done? One reason is that the state saw its job as supporting the banks rather than controlling them” (p. 53). So anxious was the Irish Government about the prospect that enforcement of banking and tax laws might drive away deep-pocketed investors that such enforcement simply didn’t happen. “In this bizarre logic, the ‘national interest’ came to be identified with the interests of those who were fleecing the nation. The way to get the rich to pay their taxes was to make it easy for them to evade their taxes” (p. 55).
In the meantime, another unwelcome development in “Celtic Tiger” Irish life was the growth of a mediatic, celebrity-focused Irish super-rich elite – a sort of new aristocracy in a country that, historically, identifies aristocracy with long centuries of occupation and expropriation. “What made the elite an aristocracy was precisely its successful insistence on the privilege that defined the French aristocracy before the revolution: exemption from taxes” (p. 82). The only difference was that this aristocracy was chronicling its social and economic conquests in the pages of Hello! magazine.
O’Toole focuses specifically on the property-development bubble that prefigured the end of the “Celtic Tiger” period: “Between 1985 and 2006, prices in Finland and Italy rose by 50 per cent, in France by 75 per cent, in the U.K. by 140 per cent, and in Ireland by almost 250 per cent” – a state of affairs that O’Toole describes, in a phrase through which this 2009 book looks ahead to the world of 2020, as a “property pandemic” (p. 102). This property bubble, according to O’Toole, had everything to do with the way in which, “Essentially, a small number of very wealthy land speculators was able to shape the market in such a way as to ensure that the cost of buying the land it stood on made up a larger and larger proportion of the cost of a house” (p. 105).
O’Toole sees the “Celtic Tiger” period as illustrative of an Irish state where the rhetoric of moving boldly forward into the 21st century stands at odds with a stodgy, backward-looking social reality. In the manner of technology education, for example, O’Toole points out that the two computer-studies courses introduced into the Irish educational curriculum in the 1980’s had not been revised since the 1980’s, and uses this observation as the basis for his suggestion that “Nowhere was the smugness, indolence, and incompetence of Irish governments more obvious than in the yawning chasm between the rhetoric of a high-tech, cutting-edge, innovative society and the reality its education system scarcely bothered to recognize” (p. 153). That kind of complacency, O’Toole repeatedly suggests, led directly to the economic crisis that marked the end of the “Celtic Tiger” period.
In that connection, O’Toole dedicates significant attention to the 2008 travails of Anglo Irish Bank, where controversy erupted over loans that the bank’s director admitted to hiding from the bank – 87 billion euros’ worth of hidden loans. That scandal, in turn, spoke to the existence of a culture in which bank directors and their speculator clients came out of a “shared culture of macho risk-taking and go-getting, and shared hobbies like horse-racing, golf, and Fianna Fáil” – all of which made Anglo Irish “the quintessential developers’ bank” (p. 201). The Anglo Irish crisis eventually led to the bank’s nationalization by the Irish Government in 2009 – a resolution that was highly costly for the ordinary Irish taxpayer, and that might remind some American readers of the days of “too big to fail” bank crises, at about the same time, in the United States of America.
A thoughtful epilogue, titled “The Second Republic,” looks back toward O’Toole’s statement, earlier in the book, that “The rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger was indeed a kind of moral tale, but the lesson was not that free-market globalisation is a panacea for the world’s ills. It is, on the contrary, that politics, society, morality, and collective institutions matter” (p. 13).
O’Toole sees some reasons for hope in contemporary Ireland. For one thing, the Catholic Church doesn’t have the all-encompassing moral and social power over Irish life that it once did; the horrific clerical-sex-abuse scandals of the late 20th century took their toll. O’Toole also sees a vibrant population of young Irish men and women who seem disposed to stay in Ireland rather than leaving for Great Britain or Australia or the U.S.A.
But then there is the Irish Republic’s sclerotic political system. The two major political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are both center-right parties; they hold much political capital from the time when Ireland won its independence from Great Britain, but there is little real difference between them in terms of contemporary policy. It is difficult to bring about meaningful change under such a political system.
Overall, O’Toole calls for recognition that Ireland is in a moral crisis, not just an economic one. Government institutions, in his reading, need to be systematically reformed. A social vision must be set forth – one that will encourage the young people of Ireland to stay in Ireland rather than emigrating, as young Irish people have done for centuries.
This Irish American, with ancestry in three Irish counties (Cork and Galway in the Republic, and Tyrone in Northern Ireland) generally found O’Toole’s analysis of the “Celtic Tiger” period and its aftermath persuasive. No doubt leaders and partisans of Fianna Fáil would interpret the period differently, but it would be difficult to argue with the proposition that the “Celtic Tiger” era involved an over-revved economy that came to a crashing halt. One hopes that future Irish governments will seek more sustainable ways of fostering economic growth on that beautiful, oft-troubled little island.
Plato’s “ship of fools” allegory – one that the philosopher uses to describe the dangers facing the people of a state that is being run by unqualified people without the necessary political knowledge and skills – is invoked here by the Irish journalist and writer Fintan O’Toole, to set forth his sense of how and why the economy of the Republic of Ireland fell so disastrously from the heady times of the “Celtic Tiger” period of 1995-2008. The “Celtic Tiger” era was seen at the time as a sort of Irish economic miracle; now, in retrospect, it looks more like an Irish bubble.
In his 2009 book Ship of Fools, O’Toole, who has been writing for decades for The Irish Times on topics from dramatic criticism to the Northern Ireland conflict, composes a sort of jeremiad on the topic of How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (the book’s subtitle). In O’Toole’s formulation, the fall of the “Celtic Tiger” could be foreshadowed in the way the “Celtic Tiger” rose – in an atmosphere in which an Irish government formed by the center-right Fianna Fáil party established policies of low taxes and minimal regulation.
It was called, at the time, “the Irish model” for European growth and prosperity, but O’Toole suggests that there wasn’t really much that was Irish about it: “Much of this enthusiasm for the ‘Irish model’ was driven by the neo-liberal Right in the U.S. For Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, Ireland was the living proof that ‘tax and spend’ Democrats were wrong and Reaganism right” (p. 10).
O’Toole is just as interested in correcting misapprehensions regarding the emergence of the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom: “For a start, one of the reasons the Irish economy grew so fast after 1995 is that it had grown so slowly before that” (p. 16). The European Union certainly didn’t regard the economy of the Republic of Ireland as any sort of Celtic Tiger: “The whole of Ireland was declared a disadvantaged area, and the E.U. poured in IR£8.6 billion in aid between 1987 and 1998” (p. 19).
Moreover, there were many ways in which Ireland set the tone for the “Celtic Tiger” boom not through the kind of neo-liberal laissez-faire policies favored by many U.S. conservatives, but rather through active government intervention: “One [measure] was to invest heavily in the expansion of state-funded third-level education” – a measure, O’Toole dryly notes, that “would have caused the average Republican senator in the U.S. to call for an exorcism” (p. 19).
In O’Toole’s formulation the “hands-off” policies of successive Fianna Fáil governments fostered systematic corruption, including massive bank fraud. “Why was nothing done? One reason is that the state saw its job as supporting the banks rather than controlling them” (p. 53). So anxious was the Irish Government about the prospect that enforcement of banking and tax laws might drive away deep-pocketed investors that such enforcement simply didn’t happen. “In this bizarre logic, the ‘national interest’ came to be identified with the interests of those who were fleecing the nation. The way to get the rich to pay their taxes was to make it easy for them to evade their taxes” (p. 55).
In the meantime, another unwelcome development in “Celtic Tiger” Irish life was the growth of a mediatic, celebrity-focused Irish super-rich elite – a sort of new aristocracy in a country that, historically, identifies aristocracy with long centuries of occupation and expropriation. “What made the elite an aristocracy was precisely its successful insistence on the privilege that defined the French aristocracy before the revolution: exemption from taxes” (p. 82). The only difference was that this aristocracy was chronicling its social and economic conquests in the pages of Hello! magazine.
O’Toole focuses specifically on the property-development bubble that prefigured the end of the “Celtic Tiger” period: “Between 1985 and 2006, prices in Finland and Italy rose by 50 per cent, in France by 75 per cent, in the U.K. by 140 per cent, and in Ireland by almost 250 per cent” – a state of affairs that O’Toole describes, in a phrase through which this 2009 book looks ahead to the world of 2020, as a “property pandemic” (p. 102). This property bubble, according to O’Toole, had everything to do with the way in which, “Essentially, a small number of very wealthy land speculators was able to shape the market in such a way as to ensure that the cost of buying the land it stood on made up a larger and larger proportion of the cost of a house” (p. 105).
O’Toole sees the “Celtic Tiger” period as illustrative of an Irish state where the rhetoric of moving boldly forward into the 21st century stands at odds with a stodgy, backward-looking social reality. In the manner of technology education, for example, O’Toole points out that the two computer-studies courses introduced into the Irish educational curriculum in the 1980’s had not been revised since the 1980’s, and uses this observation as the basis for his suggestion that “Nowhere was the smugness, indolence, and incompetence of Irish governments more obvious than in the yawning chasm between the rhetoric of a high-tech, cutting-edge, innovative society and the reality its education system scarcely bothered to recognize” (p. 153). That kind of complacency, O’Toole repeatedly suggests, led directly to the economic crisis that marked the end of the “Celtic Tiger” period.
In that connection, O’Toole dedicates significant attention to the 2008 travails of Anglo Irish Bank, where controversy erupted over loans that the bank’s director admitted to hiding from the bank – 87 billion euros’ worth of hidden loans. That scandal, in turn, spoke to the existence of a culture in which bank directors and their speculator clients came out of a “shared culture of macho risk-taking and go-getting, and shared hobbies like horse-racing, golf, and Fianna Fáil” – all of which made Anglo Irish “the quintessential developers’ bank” (p. 201). The Anglo Irish crisis eventually led to the bank’s nationalization by the Irish Government in 2009 – a resolution that was highly costly for the ordinary Irish taxpayer, and that might remind some American readers of the days of “too big to fail” bank crises, at about the same time, in the United States of America.
A thoughtful epilogue, titled “The Second Republic,” looks back toward O’Toole’s statement, earlier in the book, that “The rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger was indeed a kind of moral tale, but the lesson was not that free-market globalisation is a panacea for the world’s ills. It is, on the contrary, that politics, society, morality, and collective institutions matter” (p. 13).
O’Toole sees some reasons for hope in contemporary Ireland. For one thing, the Catholic Church doesn’t have the all-encompassing moral and social power over Irish life that it once did; the horrific clerical-sex-abuse scandals of the late 20th century took their toll. O’Toole also sees a vibrant population of young Irish men and women who seem disposed to stay in Ireland rather than leaving for Great Britain or Australia or the U.S.A.
But then there is the Irish Republic’s sclerotic political system. The two major political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are both center-right parties; they hold much political capital from the time when Ireland won its independence from Great Britain, but there is little real difference between them in terms of contemporary policy. It is difficult to bring about meaningful change under such a political system.
Overall, O’Toole calls for recognition that Ireland is in a moral crisis, not just an economic one. Government institutions, in his reading, need to be systematically reformed. A social vision must be set forth – one that will encourage the young people of Ireland to stay in Ireland rather than emigrating, as young Irish people have done for centuries.
This Irish American, with ancestry in three Irish counties (Cork and Galway in the Republic, and Tyrone in Northern Ireland) generally found O’Toole’s analysis of the “Celtic Tiger” period and its aftermath persuasive. No doubt leaders and partisans of Fianna Fáil would interpret the period differently, but it would be difficult to argue with the proposition that the “Celtic Tiger” era involved an over-revved economy that came to a crashing halt. One hopes that future Irish governments will seek more sustainable ways of fostering economic growth on that beautiful, oft-troubled little island.
March 12, 2010
The role of sheer idiocy should not be understated. As finance minister, Charlie McCreevy's credo was a textbook statement of macroeconomic illiteracy: 'When I have the money, I spend it, when I don't have it, I don't spend it'. This childish mantra, ... obliterating at a stroke everything that governments worldwide had learned about the need to restrain a runaway economy by spending less and boost a flagging economy by spending more, was the economic equivalent of bulimia: binge and purge, binge and purge.
As the Celtic tiger lies puking feebly into the gutter, surrounded by the debris caused by the bursting of one of the worst real-estate bubbles on record, the Irish economic boom has come to a painful, screeching halt. By August 2009, the month when the Irish prime minister finally dropped his "Celtic tiger as a template for economic development" speech from his speaking portfolio, the level of debt among Irish households was the highest in the EU, GDP was predicted to shrink by 13.5 percent in 2009 and 2010, Government debt had almost doubled in the preceding year. With a fifth of its office spaces empty, Dublin had the highest vacancy rate of any European capital and was rated as having the worst development and investment potential of 27 European cities. The Irish stock exchange had fallen by 68% in 2008....
The litany of depressing statistics goes on. In this book, Fintan O'Toole, a political commentator and columnist for The Irish Times, sets out in chilling detail the particular combination of factors that led to such a catastrophic end to Ireland's economic boom. Chief among them are:
* the enduring failure of successive governments to enact anything even remotely resembling regulatory controls on the banking and financial sectors
* a culture of cronyism and turning a blind eye to financial malfeasance of the most blatant kind - even when the taking of kickbacks by those in office was established beyond doubt by several investigative tribunals, penalties were nugatory to non-existent
* the Ahern government's continued feeding of the construction bubble through the creation of ever-more ridiculous tax incentives
* failure to invest profits during the boom years in areas that might provide long-term stability, such as infrastructure and higher education (probably the most depressing part of O'Toole's litany of governmental ineptness is the section that documents the abysmal ranking of Irish graduates in the areas of computer science and information technology)
Even though I've lived outside of the country for the last 30 years, I'm still an Irish citizen, and I found this book thoroughly depressing. O'Toole's jeremiad is not particularly well-written - one senses it was written in haste, and the editing is remarkably sloppy. Writing style may have fallen victim to his passion at times; nonetheless, he paints a picture which is quite clear and thoroughly depressing. I'd like to think that those shown to be particularly venal will pay the price -- I don't need Fintan O'Toole to tell me that this is altogether unlikely.
This will be of interest to anyone with some connection to Ireland, probably not all that interesting to anyone else.
February 3, 2010
Of limited interest obviously, but if you happen to be living in Ireland, this is an essential study of how seriously corrupt and inept our ruling class is. O'Toole really does an amazing job of nailing exactly what is wrong with the political culture in this country. The book is only 230 pages long yet O'Toole manages a complete overview of where and how this country went wrong. He traces it back to the deeply ingrained political culture of clientelism where national politicans are more concerned with the needs of their local constituents than the population as a whole (a speciality of our main political party, Fianna Fail).
He then traces it through the Ansbacher offshore accounts, DIRT tax avoidance scams, The (almost)hilariously despotic Charles Haughey reign, right through to the current Fianna Fail party and its policy of 'light touch' regulation and the ugly populism of the Bertie Ahern years with its culture of trying to please all of the people all of the time(at almost any cost). The whole thing, of course, fell apart at the seams when the massive property bubble burst (which they were constantly warned about by leading ecomomists for at least the last four or five years).
Not everybody is unhappy of course. The bankers converted overnight to the joys of socialism when the taxpayer bailed them out. They and their developer friends haven't been prosecuted and Fianna Fail are moving inexorably upwards in the opinion polls once again. The only people with problems are the almost half a million unemployed, those who had to emigrate, people who bought houses within the last three years and public service workers who have had two large pay cuts in the last year and who, incidentially, are really to blame for the whole sorry mess. The culture of impunity is alive and well on this fair isle.
He then traces it through the Ansbacher offshore accounts, DIRT tax avoidance scams, The (almost)hilariously despotic Charles Haughey reign, right through to the current Fianna Fail party and its policy of 'light touch' regulation and the ugly populism of the Bertie Ahern years with its culture of trying to please all of the people all of the time(at almost any cost). The whole thing, of course, fell apart at the seams when the massive property bubble burst (which they were constantly warned about by leading ecomomists for at least the last four or five years).
Not everybody is unhappy of course. The bankers converted overnight to the joys of socialism when the taxpayer bailed them out. They and their developer friends haven't been prosecuted and Fianna Fail are moving inexorably upwards in the opinion polls once again. The only people with problems are the almost half a million unemployed, those who had to emigrate, people who bought houses within the last three years and public service workers who have had two large pay cuts in the last year and who, incidentially, are really to blame for the whole sorry mess. The culture of impunity is alive and well on this fair isle.
July 7, 2015
With the default of Greece I thought it might be appropriate to read about some of the other troubled economies of the E.U. I saw this book by O’Toole and thought it might be interesting and I must say it sure was.
O’Toole is a commentator and columnist for the Irish Times and is an excellent writer. The book is written in a clear concise manner and is comprehensively researched. This is a serious book, it argues that financial power should be regulated, that crooks should be punished, that corruption should be exposed and not rewarded at the ballot box. O’Toole also outlines changes the Irish need to make to rebuild their country into a strong, financially viable country again.
O’Toole points out that the Irish boom came about from the outside not by changes, growth, and desire of the people. The government encouraged corporations to come to Ireland by offering little or no taxes, and lax regulations.
Wealthy land speculators had cornered urban markets, driving housing prices up 500 per cent in a decade. O’Toole points out that when the crash of 2008 came, the GDP shank, housing prices went into free fall, its banking system collapsed and gross indebtedness outstrips that of Japan. The author blames corrupt politicians, lax regulation, bankers complicit in fraud and tax evasion.
The pity of it O’Toole says is that the boom years were largely squandered. For a brief moment the county had the resources to improve its crumbling social facilities instead it blew it. Everyone should read about this subject and learn about the hazard of government debt before more and more countries follow in the wake of Greece. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Roger Clark narrated the book.
O’Toole is a commentator and columnist for the Irish Times and is an excellent writer. The book is written in a clear concise manner and is comprehensively researched. This is a serious book, it argues that financial power should be regulated, that crooks should be punished, that corruption should be exposed and not rewarded at the ballot box. O’Toole also outlines changes the Irish need to make to rebuild their country into a strong, financially viable country again.
O’Toole points out that the Irish boom came about from the outside not by changes, growth, and desire of the people. The government encouraged corporations to come to Ireland by offering little or no taxes, and lax regulations.
Wealthy land speculators had cornered urban markets, driving housing prices up 500 per cent in a decade. O’Toole points out that when the crash of 2008 came, the GDP shank, housing prices went into free fall, its banking system collapsed and gross indebtedness outstrips that of Japan. The author blames corrupt politicians, lax regulation, bankers complicit in fraud and tax evasion.
The pity of it O’Toole says is that the boom years were largely squandered. For a brief moment the county had the resources to improve its crumbling social facilities instead it blew it. Everyone should read about this subject and learn about the hazard of government debt before more and more countries follow in the wake of Greece. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Roger Clark narrated the book.
Read
August 4, 2023This was an odd one to read from the perspective of Ireland in 2023. Published in 2009 as an immediate lookback at the Celtic Tiger, O'Toole outlines in sardonic detail several regulatory failures in the lead-up to the Tiger, harbingers of what was to come, before reaching the main event. The introduction drew me in immediately, by which I mean had me furious from the first page.
The real strength here is in between the facts and the figures, in O'Toole's musings on the nature of Irishness, in the jump from pre-modern to post-modern and how can that possibly work without the societal growing pains and social change that should have been dealt with before making that leap.
Overall, I felt myself wanting a post-epilogue from the year 2023 looking back at the consequences of the Tiger over the past decade. When O'Toole leaves off Fianna Fáil are still in power, the IMF is yet to step in, and while austerity measures are mentioned, most hardships are still in the future.
I would definitely be interested in picking up more of O'Toole's long-form work, the technical pieces are easy to digest and he's genuinely funny in there.
The real strength here is in between the facts and the figures, in O'Toole's musings on the nature of Irishness, in the jump from pre-modern to post-modern and how can that possibly work without the societal growing pains and social change that should have been dealt with before making that leap.
Overall, I felt myself wanting a post-epilogue from the year 2023 looking back at the consequences of the Tiger over the past decade. When O'Toole leaves off Fianna Fáil are still in power, the IMF is yet to step in, and while austerity measures are mentioned, most hardships are still in the future.
I would definitely be interested in picking up more of O'Toole's long-form work, the technical pieces are easy to digest and he's genuinely funny in there.
May 2, 2025
I've missed Fintan O'Toole's undying hatred of Ireland and everyone in it.
September 17, 2025
a casually (complimentary) written account of the absurdity of the Celtic Tiger charged with anger and passion - how couldn't one be inflamed, after all? many of his ideas are better/further fleshed out in We Don't Know Ourselves, but obviously this was written ten years earlier, so no surprise there. i do wish We Don't Know Ourselves had a bit of the blunt conviction that Ship of Fools' epilogue had
July 9, 2025
A scathing, superbly written account of the mess of the Celtic tiger years in Ireland. Very much horrified and enjoyed
December 28, 2024
For someone who was only seven when the crash finally came, this was a great way to get some understanding of what led to it.
O’Toole is a fantastic writer and really made an information/statistic heavy subject matter interesting and easy to read. Some chapters were better than others, the Bertie Ahern one comes to mind, but overall I got something out of each one.
As this book is almost fifteen years old, there are definitely some theories that didn’t age well but others that did.
Overall, I definitely got a better perspective on the Celtic Tiger and the economic crash that followed. I would certainly like to read more on this subject matter.
O’Toole is a fantastic writer and really made an information/statistic heavy subject matter interesting and easy to read. Some chapters were better than others, the Bertie Ahern one comes to mind, but overall I got something out of each one.
As this book is almost fifteen years old, there are definitely some theories that didn’t age well but others that did.
Overall, I definitely got a better perspective on the Celtic Tiger and the economic crash that followed. I would certainly like to read more on this subject matter.
October 27, 2016
Interesting jeremiad against Fianna Fail's rule in Ireland during the heyday of the Celtic Tiger. If you know nothing about Irish institutions and government, you will probably not enjoy the book. Pretty outrageous stuff -- widescale tax fraud, ineffective government regulation, no limits on risky real estate loans. Unlike the US, Ireland did not need complicated devices like Collateralized Debt Obligations to screw things up.
O'Toole is a clear writer who is not afraid to expose the idiocy of politicians. My favorite section was his take on Irish "culture" during the period, personified by Michael Flatley (Lord of the Dance, etc). His description of Flatley's "Celtic Tiger" show was hilarious.
If you are an Ireland junkie, worth reading (or listening to).
O'Toole is a clear writer who is not afraid to expose the idiocy of politicians. My favorite section was his take on Irish "culture" during the period, personified by Michael Flatley (Lord of the Dance, etc). His description of Flatley's "Celtic Tiger" show was hilarious.
If you are an Ireland junkie, worth reading (or listening to).
April 18, 2010
Excellent if totally depressing read. On the face of it, would mostly be of interest to Irish readers, but much of what O'Toole says about politicians aping the wealthy and celebrities could be applied to 'New Labour'.
O'Toole himself is a wonderful writer and this is an amazingly fast and easy read considering the topic. He is insightful and pulls so many threads together brilliantly. Should be required reading for everyone in Ireland, anyone with romantic notions about the place and people interested in politics generally.
O'Toole himself is a wonderful writer and this is an amazingly fast and easy read considering the topic. He is insightful and pulls so many threads together brilliantly. Should be required reading for everyone in Ireland, anyone with romantic notions about the place and people interested in politics generally.
May 5, 2014
This book makes depressing reading.
It collects all the folly, dishonesty, willful blindness and idiocy of the 'Celtic Tiger' years in one place. Each event was more appalling than the previous one when they were revealed. Reading through them all in a few days made me terribly sad.
It was published four years ago and suggest some much-needed reforms to the Irish political system.
Surprise, surprise, they didn't happen, and in fact it often seems we're going backwards.
No doubt Fintan O'Toole's next book will be even more depressing. Not his fault.
It collects all the folly, dishonesty, willful blindness and idiocy of the 'Celtic Tiger' years in one place. Each event was more appalling than the previous one when they were revealed. Reading through them all in a few days made me terribly sad.
It was published four years ago and suggest some much-needed reforms to the Irish political system.
Surprise, surprise, they didn't happen, and in fact it often seems we're going backwards.
No doubt Fintan O'Toole's next book will be even more depressing. Not his fault.
December 4, 2012
Interesting info, and clearly written with passion, but it's a terrible mess. Appears to have been cobbled together from newspaper/magazine columns, which is not exactly my preferred book format. Editing is non-existent, and there's absolutely no chronology, historical perspective or weaving together of themes. Irish readers, who presumably have more background knowledge, might like the book somewhat more.
October 9, 2024
Very interesting read about the failings of a corrupt Irish government, bankers, developers and many others, which resulted in a national financial crisis on the small island, made all the worse by the global financial crisis of 2008. Truly a hot mess.
October 10, 2020
The Celtic Tiger was a good story, but like most good stories, it was not true.
Yes, there was a massive improvement. Unemployment from 15 to 5 %; Wealth up; so many came to work that 1 in 10 now immigrants. World leader in software production; Pfizer.
But....the reason for this is not what people think.
The myth: Ahern (famous for believing in nothing) - led Fianna Fail united with neo-liberal Progressive Democrats and it was their slashing of taxes and regulation that unleashed the tiger. The model could and should be replicated all over the world, even the US. Corporate tax rate slashed to 12.5. Treat the rich well and everyone benefits.
The reality: A unique situation with many factors:
1) Ireland had always underperformed they simply caught up with the rest of Europe in the late 90's. EVEN AT ITS BEST HAD HALF THE PER CAPTITA GDP OF CT. ABOUT THAT OF MISSISSIPPI.
2) Demographics - After a high birth rate, Women were liberated and able to control family size in 90's. So there were lots of young workers including women but not as many children to support and high emigration meant that most of the elderly who needed to be cared for lived abroad.
3) The whole world experienced the greatest leap forward in economic progress in history. Ireland was primed to take advantage. Of course foreign investors with excess capital would want their
Relatively low wages and an educated workforce.
4) The EU social and structural funds invested heavily with subsidies in Ireland which was the one of poorest countries. Common Agricultural policy benefited them.
5) A big reason was investment in higher education.
6) Social Partnerships between state, employers, trade unions.
And with this windfall, they blew it. Did the opposite of Keynes. Spent when they had it. Stopped spending when they did not. Finance Minister actually said this. Wasteful public spending led to an artificial boom, inflation, and economy became dependent on building trades. Consumption replaced production. Building replaced manufacturing as engine of growth. Fianna Fail a machine dedicated only to gaining and holding power. Cronyism, corruption was overlooked.
Corruption - When uncovered was rarely punished. Politicians with hand in the cookie jar would get caught and re-elected. Localism/Clientalism is strong. Politicians are sent to office to get something for the home district. If you got the road or school built, sins were forgiven. Have come to believe that all of them are crooks, so just support the crook who delivers the goods to you. Restrictive Libel law also makes it difficult to uncover wrongdoing.
When the collapse came, they threw money at the banks and cut social services. No massive protests as in Iceland. Big concern is that continued hardship will return Ireland to a period of emigration in which best and brightest move away.
Solutions:
Author suggests that a second Republic needs to be founded. Ireland never created a good welfare state and democracy remained underdeveloped. They had skipped modernity:
shift from religious authority to civic morality
idea that state should operate objectively and impersonally rather than a private network of mutual obligations
Independent parliament to legislate rather than serve clients.
What to do:
1) Public morality needed. Limits need to be set. Have to demand better.
2) Sweeping reform of gov. institutions. Proper system of local government to serve local needs. Trim the size of the Dail but give it more power. Should concentrate on legislating and holding government accountable, not providing goodies for local districts. Need real choices in elections. Both major parties are populist center right.
3) Social vision needed. Focus on quality of life and security to outweigh dream of getting rich quick. Will need regulation. Rich will have to pay fair share. AS STUDIES SHOW - WHILE GDP WAS DOUBLING, PEOPLE WERE LESS HAPPY. Ireland does not have an adequate welfare state.
Yes, there was a massive improvement. Unemployment from 15 to 5 %; Wealth up; so many came to work that 1 in 10 now immigrants. World leader in software production; Pfizer.
But....the reason for this is not what people think.
The myth: Ahern (famous for believing in nothing) - led Fianna Fail united with neo-liberal Progressive Democrats and it was their slashing of taxes and regulation that unleashed the tiger. The model could and should be replicated all over the world, even the US. Corporate tax rate slashed to 12.5. Treat the rich well and everyone benefits.
The reality: A unique situation with many factors:
1) Ireland had always underperformed they simply caught up with the rest of Europe in the late 90's. EVEN AT ITS BEST HAD HALF THE PER CAPTITA GDP OF CT. ABOUT THAT OF MISSISSIPPI.
2) Demographics - After a high birth rate, Women were liberated and able to control family size in 90's. So there were lots of young workers including women but not as many children to support and high emigration meant that most of the elderly who needed to be cared for lived abroad.
3) The whole world experienced the greatest leap forward in economic progress in history. Ireland was primed to take advantage. Of course foreign investors with excess capital would want their
Relatively low wages and an educated workforce.
4) The EU social and structural funds invested heavily with subsidies in Ireland which was the one of poorest countries. Common Agricultural policy benefited them.
5) A big reason was investment in higher education.
6) Social Partnerships between state, employers, trade unions.
And with this windfall, they blew it. Did the opposite of Keynes. Spent when they had it. Stopped spending when they did not. Finance Minister actually said this. Wasteful public spending led to an artificial boom, inflation, and economy became dependent on building trades. Consumption replaced production. Building replaced manufacturing as engine of growth. Fianna Fail a machine dedicated only to gaining and holding power. Cronyism, corruption was overlooked.
Corruption - When uncovered was rarely punished. Politicians with hand in the cookie jar would get caught and re-elected. Localism/Clientalism is strong. Politicians are sent to office to get something for the home district. If you got the road or school built, sins were forgiven. Have come to believe that all of them are crooks, so just support the crook who delivers the goods to you. Restrictive Libel law also makes it difficult to uncover wrongdoing.
When the collapse came, they threw money at the banks and cut social services. No massive protests as in Iceland. Big concern is that continued hardship will return Ireland to a period of emigration in which best and brightest move away.
Solutions:
Author suggests that a second Republic needs to be founded. Ireland never created a good welfare state and democracy remained underdeveloped. They had skipped modernity:
shift from religious authority to civic morality
idea that state should operate objectively and impersonally rather than a private network of mutual obligations
Independent parliament to legislate rather than serve clients.
What to do:
1) Public morality needed. Limits need to be set. Have to demand better.
2) Sweeping reform of gov. institutions. Proper system of local government to serve local needs. Trim the size of the Dail but give it more power. Should concentrate on legislating and holding government accountable, not providing goodies for local districts. Need real choices in elections. Both major parties are populist center right.
3) Social vision needed. Focus on quality of life and security to outweigh dream of getting rich quick. Will need regulation. Rich will have to pay fair share. AS STUDIES SHOW - WHILE GDP WAS DOUBLING, PEOPLE WERE LESS HAPPY. Ireland does not have an adequate welfare state.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 9, 2012
Written in a clear, engaging prose that is often angry and sometimes witty, O'Toole makes a compelling case that Ireland has experienced an acute case of crony capitalism – that is, the Irish government rather than steering the ship for the benefit of all its crew, became the vehicle for capital accumulation for the small group of friends milling about on the bridge. Indeed, it is telling that the book starts with two shipping anecdotes – one about the Sean Dunne’s (a developer) wedding to which high profile developers, bankers and politicians were invited for a two week Mediterranean cruise on board the yacht Christina O, owned since 2000 by an Irish consortium who wrote off up to two thirds of the €65 million cost against tax; the second about the Irish national yacht, the Ashgard II, which sank in September 2008 and which remains on the sea bed with little hope of salvage or replacement. The book consists of nine polemical essays, each focusing on a particular theme that together provide an overview of why Ireland finds itself in the mess it’s in.
The first chapter takes to task the notion that Ireland ever had a planned and coherent model of economic development (which it has recently been selling to every other wannabe developed nation), but rather was the beneficiary of a series of fortunate events largely outside of its control (such as the general, huge overseas expansion of US capital, structural funds from Europe, English language competence, social partnership, access to European markets, Northern Ireland peace process, etc), aided by lax regulation and a tax regime which enabled the attraction of significant foreign direct investment. Rather the narrative of economic development happened after the fact to explain Ireland’s catching up with other advanced economies, rather than forging ahead. And it was an economic model that had two fatal flaws: it only worked if there was sustained growth, and in O’Toole’s terms it was driven by stupidity and corruption that meant it became dangerous overheated so that collapse was inevitable. Simply put the economic model was geared towards over-extending ordinary citizens and over-rewarding those that were already wealthy.
The stupidity was the policy decisions of government and the head-in-the-sand approach to fiscal management and regulation, and the corruption was the blatant use of the state system for the benefit of high powered Fianna Fail supporters, the very close ties between business and state (particularly in the banking and property development sectors), and the general lack of accountability, transparency and prosecution of those defrauding the state (the focus of chapter 2). This corruption was powerful because it not only worked on a system of bribes but it: 1) fostered a sense of insider and outsider, wherein all other interested parties knew they had to participate to maintain competitive advantage (if one stock broker paid a bribe, they all had to to their maintain access to decision makers); 2) was largely condoned by the both the public sector regulators and the general public; 3) there was a culture of impunity wherein nobody was ever prosecuted for corruption and what is more if their corruption was ever exposed they maintained their access to power. In other words, corruption was allowed to flourish, and even now in the depths of the crisis it is still at work – for example in relation to how the banks have been bailed out, especially Anglo-Irish, and the setting up of NAMA protects the interests of high powered friends of Fianna Fail.
The vast majority of the electorate, he argues, let this happen because corruption, self-interest and self-duplicity and denial are embedded into Irish society. Low-level corruption, such as DIRT evasion or social welfare fraud, was widespread. Moreover, lots of people did well out of the boom with rising salaries, home equity, and small business growth. The politicians might have been corrupt, but many people were the beneficiaries. And if all politicians are corrupt, why wouldn’t you re-elect one that you knew to be so (because a tribunal had exposed them)? As long as they served local needs, they were welcome to skim a bit off the top.
In turn, he writes about the banking system, financial regulation and tax evasion; property development and the new class of super-wealthy; land speculation and development tax incentives; Ireland’s role in global financial markets and the crash; the failure to future proof Ireland for the next phase of development with respect to education, information communications infrastructure, and key transport and energy infrastructure; and the ad hoc approach to addressing the crisis once it appeared that seemingly had more to do with protecting self-interests than the national interest.
Central to O’Toole’s analysis is the notion that Ireland is not yet democratically mature, with a weak civic morality and underdeveloped system of political governance, and an electoral system that encourages and condones local clientelism and corruption. He suggests that Ireland failed to create a proper democratic republic, to go through a process of political and social reform, the establishment a strong welfare system and collective interest, and to create a state independent of Church and local interest, as in other post World War Two, European countries. Instead Ireland persisted with two, essentially ideologically barren, middle right parties that were for all intents and purposes identical and which used a form of machine politics that were highly clientalist, reactionary and short-termist.
For him, the Celtic Tiger represented an opportunity to lay the foundation for long term economic prosperity, but it was squandered by a political party more interested in short term economic gain for a small elite. The solution is to complete the democratic project in Ireland through a radical overhaul of our political system and consciousness. This means in the short term the election of a party with a radically alternative vision to Fianna Fail, and in the long term the establishment of a ‘second Republic’ with reform of the Irish electoral system, reform of the tax system, and systematic tackling of political and economic corruption accompanied by much stronger modes of governance and regulation
Overall, O’Toole’s analysis is compelling. The first half of the book is a lucid, tour de force polemic. The second half is more patchy in its argument and content, and its focus drifts a little. The book is driven by strong observational analysis, and to my mind could have benefited from some explanatory frameworks derived from the social sciences, particularly political science. There has, for example, been a debate between social scientists in Ireland as to the extent to which Ireland is a developmental state. It would have also been nice to have some comparative analysis that placed Ireland – economically, politically and socially - in relation to other European nations. Personally, I felt the conclusion also needed further elaboration on what needed to change and why, using examples from elsewhere, to really push the point home. Nevertheless, it’s a fine piece of work that will no doubt be popular reading for many people in Ireland keen to understand the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger.
The first chapter takes to task the notion that Ireland ever had a planned and coherent model of economic development (which it has recently been selling to every other wannabe developed nation), but rather was the beneficiary of a series of fortunate events largely outside of its control (such as the general, huge overseas expansion of US capital, structural funds from Europe, English language competence, social partnership, access to European markets, Northern Ireland peace process, etc), aided by lax regulation and a tax regime which enabled the attraction of significant foreign direct investment. Rather the narrative of economic development happened after the fact to explain Ireland’s catching up with other advanced economies, rather than forging ahead. And it was an economic model that had two fatal flaws: it only worked if there was sustained growth, and in O’Toole’s terms it was driven by stupidity and corruption that meant it became dangerous overheated so that collapse was inevitable. Simply put the economic model was geared towards over-extending ordinary citizens and over-rewarding those that were already wealthy.
The stupidity was the policy decisions of government and the head-in-the-sand approach to fiscal management and regulation, and the corruption was the blatant use of the state system for the benefit of high powered Fianna Fail supporters, the very close ties between business and state (particularly in the banking and property development sectors), and the general lack of accountability, transparency and prosecution of those defrauding the state (the focus of chapter 2). This corruption was powerful because it not only worked on a system of bribes but it: 1) fostered a sense of insider and outsider, wherein all other interested parties knew they had to participate to maintain competitive advantage (if one stock broker paid a bribe, they all had to to their maintain access to decision makers); 2) was largely condoned by the both the public sector regulators and the general public; 3) there was a culture of impunity wherein nobody was ever prosecuted for corruption and what is more if their corruption was ever exposed they maintained their access to power. In other words, corruption was allowed to flourish, and even now in the depths of the crisis it is still at work – for example in relation to how the banks have been bailed out, especially Anglo-Irish, and the setting up of NAMA protects the interests of high powered friends of Fianna Fail.
The vast majority of the electorate, he argues, let this happen because corruption, self-interest and self-duplicity and denial are embedded into Irish society. Low-level corruption, such as DIRT evasion or social welfare fraud, was widespread. Moreover, lots of people did well out of the boom with rising salaries, home equity, and small business growth. The politicians might have been corrupt, but many people were the beneficiaries. And if all politicians are corrupt, why wouldn’t you re-elect one that you knew to be so (because a tribunal had exposed them)? As long as they served local needs, they were welcome to skim a bit off the top.
In turn, he writes about the banking system, financial regulation and tax evasion; property development and the new class of super-wealthy; land speculation and development tax incentives; Ireland’s role in global financial markets and the crash; the failure to future proof Ireland for the next phase of development with respect to education, information communications infrastructure, and key transport and energy infrastructure; and the ad hoc approach to addressing the crisis once it appeared that seemingly had more to do with protecting self-interests than the national interest.
Central to O’Toole’s analysis is the notion that Ireland is not yet democratically mature, with a weak civic morality and underdeveloped system of political governance, and an electoral system that encourages and condones local clientelism and corruption. He suggests that Ireland failed to create a proper democratic republic, to go through a process of political and social reform, the establishment a strong welfare system and collective interest, and to create a state independent of Church and local interest, as in other post World War Two, European countries. Instead Ireland persisted with two, essentially ideologically barren, middle right parties that were for all intents and purposes identical and which used a form of machine politics that were highly clientalist, reactionary and short-termist.
For him, the Celtic Tiger represented an opportunity to lay the foundation for long term economic prosperity, but it was squandered by a political party more interested in short term economic gain for a small elite. The solution is to complete the democratic project in Ireland through a radical overhaul of our political system and consciousness. This means in the short term the election of a party with a radically alternative vision to Fianna Fail, and in the long term the establishment of a ‘second Republic’ with reform of the Irish electoral system, reform of the tax system, and systematic tackling of political and economic corruption accompanied by much stronger modes of governance and regulation
Overall, O’Toole’s analysis is compelling. The first half of the book is a lucid, tour de force polemic. The second half is more patchy in its argument and content, and its focus drifts a little. The book is driven by strong observational analysis, and to my mind could have benefited from some explanatory frameworks derived from the social sciences, particularly political science. There has, for example, been a debate between social scientists in Ireland as to the extent to which Ireland is a developmental state. It would have also been nice to have some comparative analysis that placed Ireland – economically, politically and socially - in relation to other European nations. Personally, I felt the conclusion also needed further elaboration on what needed to change and why, using examples from elsewhere, to really push the point home. Nevertheless, it’s a fine piece of work that will no doubt be popular reading for many people in Ireland keen to understand the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger.
February 16, 2020
I was 31 in 2008. Married the year before and we had our first in the May of that year. The bankruptcy of Ireland, shook the nation. This was not some minor failing. People died by their own hands. Lost their homes, dignity, and hopes for the future. Fled their country. So when it comes to writing a review of Ship of Fools, it is difficult to treat the book as a book and not get drawn into the events that it describes.
Ship of Fools is a searing history of that period. Returning to this book in 2020, is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. When it was published, there was a sense that things could change, and O'Toole subsequent book Enough is Enough plotted a path to reform. But now twelve years on I am struggling to identify a single substantive change in Irish society.
What we've learned is that the great and the good are neither great nor good. But then we knew that anyway. O'Toole sketches a peculiar characteristic, where we know they're crooked but we keep voting them in anyway. It's as if their abuse of us is evidence of our weakness, rather than their baselessness. Another characteristic is a perverse pride, where the Irish could conceive of themselves as Kings of the Wild Frontier, mocking the rule of law and providing a capitalist utopia where the captains of finance could rein supreme, free of tax, regulation and basic decency.
The Land looms large in Ireland and predictably, our own malaise concerns The Land The Land we were driven from, The Land the Brits stole. The Land! Ship of Fools shows us how Ireland's corruption went from seedy and obvious to systemic and subtle. There was no need for the monied classes to sully their hands with brown envelopes in darkened snugs, when the very ideology underpinning the state meant that to obstruct the interests of the monied was to obstruct the national interest. Why bribe when you can toast champagne in the Galway tent?
Twelve years on and with Fianna Fail still the largest political party in the state, it appears we have forgotten everything and learnt nothing.
Ship of Fools is a searing history of that period. Returning to this book in 2020, is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. When it was published, there was a sense that things could change, and O'Toole subsequent book Enough is Enough plotted a path to reform. But now twelve years on I am struggling to identify a single substantive change in Irish society.
What we've learned is that the great and the good are neither great nor good. But then we knew that anyway. O'Toole sketches a peculiar characteristic, where we know they're crooked but we keep voting them in anyway. It's as if their abuse of us is evidence of our weakness, rather than their baselessness. Another characteristic is a perverse pride, where the Irish could conceive of themselves as Kings of the Wild Frontier, mocking the rule of law and providing a capitalist utopia where the captains of finance could rein supreme, free of tax, regulation and basic decency.
The Land looms large in Ireland and predictably, our own malaise concerns The Land The Land we were driven from, The Land the Brits stole. The Land! Ship of Fools shows us how Ireland's corruption went from seedy and obvious to systemic and subtle. There was no need for the monied classes to sully their hands with brown envelopes in darkened snugs, when the very ideology underpinning the state meant that to obstruct the interests of the monied was to obstruct the national interest. Why bribe when you can toast champagne in the Galway tent?
Twelve years on and with Fianna Fail still the largest political party in the state, it appears we have forgotten everything and learnt nothing.
February 13, 2021
This book is best understood as two books in one.
The first of these is contained in chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, and offers a compelling portrait of what Ireland was like during the Celtic Tiger. It is strongly informed by O’Toole’s cultural attitudes and his penchant psycho-social pathologizing. Those who enjoyed Heroic Failure will get a lot out of these chapters, and I learned a lot from it.
But it’s the other book, contained in chapters 2, 3, and 9, in which O’Toole sets himself apart as Ireland’s most astute political commentator. The project of these chapters is to draw a direct line from the superficially benign Irish culture of cronyism and petty corruption to the catastrophic failure of the Irish financial system in 2008. The relative strength of these chapters is the concreteness of the analysis at hand – once O’Toole offers his explanation, it’s hard to imagine any alternative narrative being satisfactory.
O’Toole would presumably argue that neither of these stories makes sense without the other – his experience as a theatre-critic-turned-political-commentator gives him a heightened sensitivity to cultural influences on political affairs. Whether or not you agree with him on this point will likely depend on whether you think that the Celtic Tiger was such a profoundly irrational period in Irish life that only the most holistic possible account can shed light on the phenomenon, or whether, like me, you suspect that the whole thing can be understood in fairly banal materialistic terms.
The first of these is contained in chapters 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, and offers a compelling portrait of what Ireland was like during the Celtic Tiger. It is strongly informed by O’Toole’s cultural attitudes and his penchant psycho-social pathologizing. Those who enjoyed Heroic Failure will get a lot out of these chapters, and I learned a lot from it.
But it’s the other book, contained in chapters 2, 3, and 9, in which O’Toole sets himself apart as Ireland’s most astute political commentator. The project of these chapters is to draw a direct line from the superficially benign Irish culture of cronyism and petty corruption to the catastrophic failure of the Irish financial system in 2008. The relative strength of these chapters is the concreteness of the analysis at hand – once O’Toole offers his explanation, it’s hard to imagine any alternative narrative being satisfactory.
O’Toole would presumably argue that neither of these stories makes sense without the other – his experience as a theatre-critic-turned-political-commentator gives him a heightened sensitivity to cultural influences on political affairs. Whether or not you agree with him on this point will likely depend on whether you think that the Celtic Tiger was such a profoundly irrational period in Irish life that only the most holistic possible account can shed light on the phenomenon, or whether, like me, you suspect that the whole thing can be understood in fairly banal materialistic terms.
February 3, 2022
A fine and necessary piece of extended journalism. FOT worries away at the problem of what happened to Ireland and why it rivals Italy and Greece in venality. Needless to say, it comes down to history. And I think that he’s right: the English Ascendancy (goes back to the Normans, so partly French Norse), coupled with the extraordinary power of the Catholic Church has resulted in stunted and distorted civil structures. Sin was primarily about sex not money.
Land ownership is paramount for many people because that was the the way that the oppressors held their power. And it is a small country in which everyone knows each other and there is only a relative handful of players. Why would a player pay tax? He (and it always was he) had a duty to put one over on authority. He talks about the collective madness that prevailed from 2000 to 2008 but not in those terms. He is scathing about the government’s underwriting of all banks in 2009, including Anglo Irish, which should have been allowed to fail since it was primarily a vehicle for bandit developers.
I checked home ownership levels: they are reportedly about 68% down from the exceptional levels of the boom but still. Higher than the UK’s 65%. House prices are nearly back to the frenzied peak of the boom, with an average house price of about 290,000 Euros, not a good sign although inflation must have eroded the 2008 nominal values somewhat. These values are relatively close to uk averages but the GDP per capita in the UK is substantially lower.
Land ownership is paramount for many people because that was the the way that the oppressors held their power. And it is a small country in which everyone knows each other and there is only a relative handful of players. Why would a player pay tax? He (and it always was he) had a duty to put one over on authority. He talks about the collective madness that prevailed from 2000 to 2008 but not in those terms. He is scathing about the government’s underwriting of all banks in 2009, including Anglo Irish, which should have been allowed to fail since it was primarily a vehicle for bandit developers.
I checked home ownership levels: they are reportedly about 68% down from the exceptional levels of the boom but still. Higher than the UK’s 65%. House prices are nearly back to the frenzied peak of the boom, with an average house price of about 290,000 Euros, not a good sign although inflation must have eroded the 2008 nominal values somewhat. These values are relatively close to uk averages but the GDP per capita in the UK is substantially lower.
July 21, 2021
I bought this book in the airport as I left Ireland for good and moved over to Paris. It was during one of the most bleakest economic recessions ever to hit Ireland. At that time all sorts of innuendo and anecdotes were being printed in the press about the catastrophic decision making of the Fianna Fail government during the Celtic tiger boom years. The author is political and economic commentator and was always one of the more dissenting voices in the Irish media. This book however, is his 'Coup de Grace', he lays bear in his own way the failures at government level, the corruption, clientelism and cronyism which led to Ireland building and selling over-priced houses to each other...based on the availability of easy credit...and labelling that an economic miracle.
I suppose what really hit home was the lack of solidarity at government level with Irish citizens. The sense of entitlement by our politicians, the lobby groups and conflict of interest. Ireland to an outsider seems this idyllic Island with beautiful scenery, but scratch below the surface of that and you have one of the most corrupt and rotten states in the EU. The author spells this out for the reader with details and statistics that will depress the reader, but still this is a definite read for those want to know more about this dark period in Irish economic history.
I suppose what really hit home was the lack of solidarity at government level with Irish citizens. The sense of entitlement by our politicians, the lobby groups and conflict of interest. Ireland to an outsider seems this idyllic Island with beautiful scenery, but scratch below the surface of that and you have one of the most corrupt and rotten states in the EU. The author spells this out for the reader with details and statistics that will depress the reader, but still this is a definite read for those want to know more about this dark period in Irish economic history.
May 27, 2022
I bought this when it was fairly recent but only just got round to it. In the meantime I haven't become knowledgeable about Irish politics and economics, so I'm not an informed reader.
That said, this makes what seems a credible and convincing indictment of the Irish political and economic scene up to and through the now long-gone Celtic tiger years, as thoroughly corrupt and wilfully delusional; and beyond that, an equally harsh but fair-seeming indictment of the Irish public for allowing and even enabling that scene to play out to the end, for instance routinely re-electing politicians after they had been exposed as foolish and/or criminal. I find it easy to believe; it chimes with the observed Irish propensity to what the Bible calls 'vanity' at the national level.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what proportion of other countries are free of flaws as serious as the endemic cronyism and collective self-deception described here, even if Ireland has had specific historical factors to contend with, such as its extreme lateness in adopting 20th-century social mores and the prolonged dominance of a repressive Catholic social order.
O'Toole is a very readable journalistic writer, clear and lively and judgemental. A vivid and absorbing read if you're interested in the subject.
That said, this makes what seems a credible and convincing indictment of the Irish political and economic scene up to and through the now long-gone Celtic tiger years, as thoroughly corrupt and wilfully delusional; and beyond that, an equally harsh but fair-seeming indictment of the Irish public for allowing and even enabling that scene to play out to the end, for instance routinely re-electing politicians after they had been exposed as foolish and/or criminal. I find it easy to believe; it chimes with the observed Irish propensity to what the Bible calls 'vanity' at the national level.
On the other hand, I'm not sure what proportion of other countries are free of flaws as serious as the endemic cronyism and collective self-deception described here, even if Ireland has had specific historical factors to contend with, such as its extreme lateness in adopting 20th-century social mores and the prolonged dominance of a repressive Catholic social order.
O'Toole is a very readable journalistic writer, clear and lively and judgemental. A vivid and absorbing read if you're interested in the subject.
December 11, 2017
Great book. I was genuinely surprised by the amount of fraud present in Ireland during Celtic Tiger years. I thought that stuff presented in movies like “The Big Short” was quite scary and also quite astounding but the things going on in Ireland surpassed any of my expectations.
I wouldn’t have thought about it earlier but now I think that Ireland is a worse country than Poland (my mother country) in terms of ethics in public life. I mean that every now and then there are some big scandals but at least in Poland heads usually roll and there’s sometimes some reform. None of that happening in Ireland.
And we like to think in Poland that big companies and foreign banks are sucking money out of us, they’re (somewhat) reckless etc. but in reality banking system in Poland seems to be much healthier.
Definitely worth reading for anyone with some interest to Irish public life or financial crisis.
I wouldn’t have thought about it earlier but now I think that Ireland is a worse country than Poland (my mother country) in terms of ethics in public life. I mean that every now and then there are some big scandals but at least in Poland heads usually roll and there’s sometimes some reform. None of that happening in Ireland.
And we like to think in Poland that big companies and foreign banks are sucking money out of us, they’re (somewhat) reckless etc. but in reality banking system in Poland seems to be much healthier.
Definitely worth reading for anyone with some interest to Irish public life or financial crisis.
August 19, 2018
Witty and ruthless takedown of Irish politicians and billionaires at the helm of the disastrous 21st century economic bust in the country.
The writing in this book is often messy, and reads rather like a clever and passionate dinner guest firing off anecdotes in a heated discussion. Quick bursts of scathing satirical commentary, stitched together with names and figures.
The picture is bleak, and the outlook pessimistic, which, for anyone currently living in Ireland, should come as no great shock. The housing crisis alone is keeping people well on edge here, with prices soaring and many forced to live on the streets.
At least the government's main sins, those of doing absolutely nothing to intervene in anything, and of wanting to be universally likable, are also what makes it possible to publish a book like this here. Certain other mismanaged economies around the globe can't "boast" of the same laissez-faire attitude regarding their local billionaires' passionate critics.
The writing in this book is often messy, and reads rather like a clever and passionate dinner guest firing off anecdotes in a heated discussion. Quick bursts of scathing satirical commentary, stitched together with names and figures.
The picture is bleak, and the outlook pessimistic, which, for anyone currently living in Ireland, should come as no great shock. The housing crisis alone is keeping people well on edge here, with prices soaring and many forced to live on the streets.
At least the government's main sins, those of doing absolutely nothing to intervene in anything, and of wanting to be universally likable, are also what makes it possible to publish a book like this here. Certain other mismanaged economies around the globe can't "boast" of the same laissez-faire attitude regarding their local billionaires' passionate critics.
March 2, 2021
Sunk By The Blarney Stone
The brilliant Fintan O'Toole turns his eye to the Irish debacle of the so called Celtic Tiger. Though you may not know all the characters, you will revel in this blistering account of corruption and failure. O'Toole, who writes for the Irish Times and now, The New York Review of Books (what a find he is) writes with a sharpness and objectivity you will find hard to resist.
Taking us through the history of the last 30 odd years (1980-2009), O'Toole shows how old fashioned Irish adherence to its Catholic closed culture, Tammany Hall incarnate, created a real estate bubble, a tax haven and blind state corruption of bewildering proportions. I particularly enjoyed his stabs at Irish culture in the 1990's, his scathing accounts of boybands and Riverdance.
He is one of my very favourite journalists these days. His accounts on Brexit and the Trump presidency are acute and satisfying - so is this stunner on Ireland.
The brilliant Fintan O'Toole turns his eye to the Irish debacle of the so called Celtic Tiger. Though you may not know all the characters, you will revel in this blistering account of corruption and failure. O'Toole, who writes for the Irish Times and now, The New York Review of Books (what a find he is) writes with a sharpness and objectivity you will find hard to resist.
Taking us through the history of the last 30 odd years (1980-2009), O'Toole shows how old fashioned Irish adherence to its Catholic closed culture, Tammany Hall incarnate, created a real estate bubble, a tax haven and blind state corruption of bewildering proportions. I particularly enjoyed his stabs at Irish culture in the 1990's, his scathing accounts of boybands and Riverdance.
He is one of my very favourite journalists these days. His accounts on Brexit and the Trump presidency are acute and satisfying - so is this stunner on Ireland.
June 18, 2025
A damning examination of the demise of the “Celtic Tiger” era (1995–2008), this book revisits what was once hailed as an Irish economic miracle, now widely regarded as an economic bubble.
Fintan O’Toole, a longtime writer for The Irish Times whose work spans dramatic criticism to the Northern Ireland conflict, delivers a polemic that reads as a kind of jeremiad against the conditions that led to the boom and bust. In his view, the fall of the “Celtic Tiger” was foreshadowed by the very circumstances of its rise: an economic environment fostered by the center-right Fianna Fáil government, which prioritized low taxes and minimal regulation.
The European Union certainly didn’t regard the economy of the Republic of Ireland as any sort of Celtic Tiger: “The whole of Ireland was declared a disadvantaged area, and the E.U. poured in IR£8.6 billion in aid between 1987 and 1998” (p. 19).
Fintan O’Toole, a longtime writer for The Irish Times whose work spans dramatic criticism to the Northern Ireland conflict, delivers a polemic that reads as a kind of jeremiad against the conditions that led to the boom and bust. In his view, the fall of the “Celtic Tiger” was foreshadowed by the very circumstances of its rise: an economic environment fostered by the center-right Fianna Fáil government, which prioritized low taxes and minimal regulation.
The European Union certainly didn’t regard the economy of the Republic of Ireland as any sort of Celtic Tiger: “The whole of Ireland was declared a disadvantaged area, and the E.U. poured in IR£8.6 billion in aid between 1987 and 1998” (p. 19).
July 4, 2024
Written at the height of the Celtic Tiger crash, much of this book now seems dated. But a frightening amount of it is still relevant. The government still makes tax changes with known loopholes built into them and no progress has been made on attempting to control the profits to be made by developers sitting on vacant sites for years to ensure that too much development land is not simultaneously available on the market. But hasn't the housing market changed? Far from too many unwanted houses, we continuously struggle to build sufficient for our growing population.
As ever, O'Toole writes engagingly - and if some of the lessons are out of date, sufficient aren't to make this a worthwhile read.
As ever, O'Toole writes engagingly - and if some of the lessons are out of date, sufficient aren't to make this a worthwhile read.
May 7, 2017
A tough and depressing read if you are an Irish citizen. It is at times educational, but merely reinforces the paradigm that it can and will happen again bolstered by the same brazenness, greed and apathy that created the apparently all powerful yet intangible Celtic 'Tiger'. A latent and terrible monster for the peasants of Ireland, created through artificial and baseless means by a group of people entrusted with the ultimate power by the populous, which is inevitably consumed by the murky jungle quicksand upon which it was born; the death throes of which formed a ceaseless debtors prison for the people of Ireland yet created a wonderland escape for the culprits.
May 31, 2022
The encyclopedic knowledge of the post-independence Irish political landscape commanded by the author should be applauded. Thought a bit dated twelve years on since it’s original publication, the book provides a pithy account of the Celtic Tiger years and yields some useful insights. That said, the author’s overall appraisal of politicians’ complicity in the eventual burst of the economic bubble is parochial in its scope and specious in its conclusions.
September 17, 2023
I lived through this stuff. I understand the misery that these people 'who knew more than us' inflicted on us and on our children. I remember most of the material that Fintan O'Toole cycles through. I just don't think he manages to pull it into a coherent, engaging narrative. And I really started to get tired of his preachy style. Probably an accurate account of some crazy times, but not for me a good book.
March 21, 2022
The title says it all - morals and ethics as taught in Ireland only concerned sex. The bribes, favors and backhanders that politicians took from developers were just considered a perk of the job, and no more reprehensible than the ministerial limo'. And even when the bust came, none of the players were punished.
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