Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the IIEA and an expert who lived through the crisis, said the Irish recovery timeline is remarkably similar to the Swedish banking crisis of the 1980s – a near 20-year cycle to regain stability.
Yet the sheer scale of the losses at the notorious Anglo Irish Bank, which cost taxpayers roughly €30bn (£26bn) prevents a neat story of success.
O’Brien suggests that “if you take Anglo out of it… it would have been like the Swedish case from the 80s, and you could definitely say it was a success”.
The closing of the era also revives the debate over whether the international lenders to Ireland’s failing banks should have shared some of the losses – what was known as “burning the bondholders”.
O’Brien highlights that the decision to insulate those lenders was driven by “immense pressure” from the Eurozone.
“There was absolute certainty in Frankfurt that if… bank bonds were burnt, then that would affect the borrowing cost of all banks across the Eurozone,” O’Brien explains.
This led to the infamous ultimatum from Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank, that “a bomb would go off in Dublin” if bondholders were not protected.
O’Brien says it is striking how that experience did not lead to a growth in Eurosceptism.
“If you look at opinion polling today about the European Union, Irish people are among the most pro-EU on all the metrics—in terms of pro-euro, pro-trust in the European Commission, trust in the European institutions, Ireland is right up at the top there.”