A good piece looking behind the mask of the Irish economic miracle:

The Celtic Tiger was essentially created not by the Irish but by American hi-tech multinationals, eager to find a convenient launch-pad into Europe and attracted to Ireland by its educated and moderately rewarded workforce, Euro-friendly orientation, and crucially, by its rock-bottom 10 per cent rate of corporate tax

Overall, the dynamic is not unlike the one that has colonised downtown Dublin with fake Oirish pubs, whose emeraldy, signposty, plastic ambience proved such a huge hit in Helsinki and Manhattan that it was then re-imported back into Ireland, widely supplanting the authentic item that inspired them.

Ireland is given to illusory, indulgent images of itself. With the latest Celtic Tiger variant, all it has managed to do is modernise its self-delusion.

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