What made the real end of the Celtic Tiger after 2001 disastrous, however, was the decision of the Fianna Fáil-led government to replace one kind of growth with another. Ireland had become prosperous because its workers were unusually productive and because its economy was exporting stuff that people wanted to buy. The government decided that it would stay prosperous by going for what the National Competitiveness Council would later summarize as ‘growth derived from asset price inflation, fuelled by a combination of low interest rates, reckless lending and speculation’.
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