FDI in Spain: What Can We Learn from the Celtic Tiger? (La inversión extranjera directa en España: qué podemos aprender del tigre celta?)

Ireland’s exceptionally deep economic and fiscal crisis had an immediate and profound impact on employment and household incomes. The percentage of children below a 2008 relative income threshold increased in line with prices, rose from 18 per cent to 28 per cent, and by 2012 32 per cent of children were in households reporting severe material deprivation. The impact of the recession was significantly buffered by the social security system providing an income floor for those who lost their jobs, despite cuts in some social transfers, and the redistributive impact of the tax and transfer system increased markedly. Overall the Irish welfare state proved reasonably robust in responding to the crisis, bringing about rapid fiscal adjustment, although public expenditure cuts on key services, high levels of debt, failure to generate adequate affordable housing, and the scarring effects of unemployment mean it will have a lasting impact on families.

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Review article: Reclaiming the rebellion: 1798 in 1998

Irish Historical Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021121400014231 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 31 (123) ◽

pp. 395-410

Author(s):

Ian McBride

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Rural Communities ◽

Review Article ◽

Physical Force ◽

Celtic Tiger ◽

Men And Women ◽

International Dimension ◽

Good Friday ◽

The North ◽

The Many

Few Irish men and women can have escaped the mighty wave of anniversary fever which broke over the island in the spring of 1998. As if atoning for the failed rebellion itself, the bicentenary of 1798 was neither ill-coordinated nor localised, but a genuinely national phenomenon produced by years of planning and organisation. Emissaries were dispatched from Dublin and Belfast to remote rural communities, and the resonant names of Bartlett, Whelan, Keogh and Graham were heard throughout the land; indeed, the commemoration possessed an international dimension which stretched to Boston, New York, Toronto, Liverpool, London and Glasgow. In bicentenary Wexford — complete with ’98 Heritage Trail and ’98 Village — the values of democracy and pluralism were triumphantly proclaimed. When the time came, the north did not hesitate, but participated enthusiastically. Even the French arrived on cue, this time on bicycle. Just as the 1898 centenary, which contributed to the revitalisation of physical-force nationalism, has now become an established subject in its own right, future historians will surely scrutinise this mother of all anniversaries for evidence concerning the national pulse in the era of the Celtic Tiger and the Good Friday Agreement. In the meantime a survey of some of the many essay collections and monographs published during the bicentenary will permit us to hazard a few generalisations about the current direction of what might now be termed ‘Ninety-Eight Studies’.

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