Anti-austerity protest Dublin, 2012. William Murphy/ Flickr. Some rights reserved.On a wet and windy winter evening in December 2015, a crowd of 1,000 people gathers around a doorstep in Dublin’s city centre, a stone’s throw from the Irish parliament. A representative of the Irish traveling community, a group of under 65,000 people that has long been fighting unsuccessfully for official recognition as an ethnic minority, enters the stage. The woman reluctantly explains that she is not a good public speaker. The crowd nonetheless breaks into cheer when she emphatically declares: “Europe has to see now what’s going on, they really do have to see what’s going on.”
The scene raises the question of what it is that Europe has to see ‘going on’ in the Republic of Ireland in the winter of 2015/16? Official statistics draw the picture of a sizeable economic recovery. After eight austerity budgets since 2008 and an €85 billion EU/IMF bailout programme in 2010, the Republic of Ireland presents a 7% growth rate in 2015, making it the EU’s best performing economy for two consecutive years.
Nominal income exceeds that of 2014 by €20billion and public debt is predicted to sink below the 100% GDP mark. The American Chambers of Commerce announced in December 2015 that US multinationals are expected to create an additional 14,000 jobs in Ireland over the next two years. Those relying on government statistics and mainstream media reports might ask “What’s not to like?”
