For a brief period since Independence the Irish people could see that their culture embodied in Fianna Fail was being vindicated. Finally some wealth, finally owning the hotels in London their parents and grandparents polished the brass in.
Even as fewer and fewer couples could afford to buy a house during the Celtic credit boom the conventional wisdom that Ireland was getting wealthier and wealthier was rarely questioned. In fact most want that boom back. None of the Trinity College economists who are now outlining the woes of the credit boom and the banking crisis saw anything amiss. They saw the boom as a vindication of the market. They didn't even have the wisdom to see that Alan Greenspan's money printing was actually government intervention into the market that would eventually cause the misallocation of scare resources. That misallocation and wealth destruction would eventually be repriced by the market.
Some, such as Brian Lucey of Trinity, often produced reports at the pay of government departments confirming the economic situation even as the boom inflation was driving the very multinationals out of the country that caused the boom. All of this on top of the indigenous industries that were destroyed along the way. The business cycle of Austrian economics is totally ignored by the number crunching Neo-Classical and Keynesian economists who use historic data to extrapolate into the future along with handy assumptions to make the Math work. As the Nobel prize winning economist Coase said 'If you torture the data long enough, it will confess'.
On the other side of the dark years ahead it is possible that there will be a complete destruction of the belief in the clientilism of Fianna Fail that is the main stream of Irish culture. If that happens then finally it is possible that Ireland will become a real country. A meritocratic country where hard work and real wealth creation takes place as opposed to an island of confidence-trickers looking for income through EU tax dodging and rent seeking activities.
It is hard for people to have to lose the culture that they love so much and think is the best in the world. The endless pints after sporting games and the craic with all the friends and family you have helped out; and to lose all that with such a high monetary cost. However, the monetary pain must be absolutely huge for this kind of change. For as the German post war example shows best, you can only become something better when you rise out of the ashes.
