Any Other Business | 20 November 2010

Caught between EU politicking and market sharks, the Irish deserve sympathy not scorn

My sympathies are with the Irish as they find themselves being shoved towards an EU bailout which they regard as a loss of hard-won sovereignty — and it’s pointless to go on scoffing at their earlier eagerness to enjoy the low euro interest rates and fountains of Brussels subsidy that fuelled the grotesque real-estate boom which ended in spectacular bust. Unlike the Greeks, the Irish accepted the need for severe austerity measures without rioting or recrimination. But their tiny economy, one fifteenth the size of Britain’s, is now a pawn in a double game. On one hand, EU leaders want to impose a bailout to prove that they can, to prevent ‘contagion’ — which is code for holding the euro intact at least until the next crisis — and, in passing, to undermine Ireland’s fiscal competitiveness by forcing an increase in its ultra-low corporation tax rate.