IRELAND & MICHIGAN: Celtic Tiger Awaking Slowly, Shaking Into New Life

August 2, 2013
By: Dave Rogers

CARRAROE, COUNTY GALWAY (An Cheatra Rua in Gaelic):

The Celtic Tiger economic boom in Ireland peaked in 2008 and soon crashed, like Michigan and most of the U.S.

Now brushing away the cobwebs, Ireland is looking around to see a vast new world, much as we in Michigan are experiencing.

The Irish are paying property taxes for the first time (pay up now or the tax will be deducted from your check, pensioners and workers are told).

More than a million water meters are being installed across Ireland and a vast new employment base of collectors and mechanics has been created.

Banks here are losing only half of their deficits from last year, so things are looking up.

Pensions are being cut, or eliminated, and some folks are having to make do with a penurious £3,000 a year.

Housing sales are coming back and prices are rising, but not to boom levels yet.

Authorities are still trying to track down the profit mongers, said to be 13 evil ones, who created the false boom, took winnings and crept away.

The Irish papers are filled with a combination of gloom and doom or hopeful signs stories, a schizophrenic cacophony that mirrors the world of sport: euphoria one day and devastation the next, depending on the score.

Hurling is big here, and football (soccer) with every movement of stars tracked minutely in the press and, now, television media that was rare until a few years ago.

When sports broadcaster Colm Murray died last week the President of Ireland, Peter O'Higgins, was among mourners at his funeral, an example of how sport is treasured here.

Actually, driving in Ireland is a blood sport; hundreds have been killed on the narrow roads in the west just since January. A journey on a winding road is a nerve-wracking experience, especially when complicated by a new wrinkle on some diesels: they are made to stall to save fuel. Slowing down or going around a corner may also cause a stall that creates a harrowing road block.

We stopped at a hotel in Clonbur and had the most lovely seafood chowder, with the catch fresh out of nearby Lough Mask. On this bank holiday weekend hundreds of fishermen are descending on this place for the World's Fly Fishing Tournament (catches tallied daily at the local pub.)

In Cong, famed site of the John Wayne/Maureen O'Hara Quiet Man movie, inquiring for an Arnold Palmer (iced tea and lemonade), we were met with "Who?" and "I don't do it!" We settled for what the local pub called lemonade, an insipid sort of 7-Up -- a £2.50 per.

Clare Island organic salmon, grown in huge offshore nets, is the most prized fish and it takes only a hook, not a fly and line, to get them to the table.

Writers are still recalling the grim days of the potato famine in the mid 19th century when half of Ireland clambered aboard "coffin ships" for a long journey to Ellis Island, New York. Reunions are being held of the descendants of entire villages in County Mayo whose ancestors escaped to prosperity in the U.S.

Potatoes have made a comeback here and the gardens fairly bulge with a variety they call "Queens," another sign the country that fought so hard for independence is still in the thrall of the royals.

Despite the vast disparity in population (Ireland has only a sparsely scattered 3 million people), the parallels are striking: boom and bust through the decades and now, belt tightening.

The days when a famous but controversial Irishman, Sir Roger Casement, fresh from being knighted after saving starving children in Africa and Peru, arrived here -- Carraroe, in 1914.

He proclaimed this the most poverty-stricken place in the civilized world and, due to his backing of Germany in World War I and alleged sexual peccadilloes, was hung by the British.

Looking back on our history with the Brits, including two wars with them, it makes one wonder why both the U.S. and Ireland are gaga over a new prince of Cambridge.

Strikes me the last thing we need is another King George. The Irish, who are being courted to rejoin the British Commonwealth, are sure royalty in Britain has a reformed attitude toward their constituents.

All both nations can do is hope history doesn't repeat. ###