ABSTRACT
Ireland was the first EU country to declare itself officially in recession in August 2008 and the second Eurozone country to have a structural adjustment programme imposed by the International Monetary Fund/European Central Bank/European Commission (IMF/ECB/EC), which became known as the ‘troika’. The turnaround of the Irish economy in just a few short years has been dramatic — from one with the highest levels of GDP and employment growth to among those with the highest unemployment, emigration and debt levels across the EU. Ireland's economic policy throughout the ‘boom decade’ from 1998–2008 was based on a neo-liberal low tax strategy and the consequences of this have shaped the particular way in which the recession has unfolded and its enormous negative impact on Irish public finances: firstly, through the overreliance on taxation income from an overblown property and construction sector and secondly, the high level of public subsidy that has been made available to a crisis-ridden Irish banking sector.
