A Bedraggled 'Celtic Tiger' Struggles to Retrain Workers

The Wall Street Journal ^ | April 20, 2012 | PAUL SONNE And DAVID ENRICH

[MinorityRepublican]

BALLINASLOE, Ireland—Michael Brennan once earned as much as €1,000 ($1,300) a week as a carpenter installing roofs during Ireland's housing boom. But after about three years without steady work, the 29-year-old is starting over in a freezing meat hall here, trying to carve out a new—and much less lucrative—future.

Mr. Brennan is enrolled in a training course where he is learning to excise bones from bloody slabs of cow. In the end, he hopes to land an entry-level job at a meat-processing factory. The likely pay: €350 a week.

Mr. Brennan is part of a mass reinvention of Ireland's workforce that is under way in one of the euro zone's most hard-hit economies. Four years after Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" was slain by the global financial crisis, the country's 14.6% unemployment rate is higher than it was in the doldrums of 2009, and the country has slipped back into recession.

The tally of borrowers falling behind or defaulting on mortgage payments has hit a new peak, and the country's greatest exodus in decades is unfolding. An estimated 76,400 people left Ireland in the year ended April 2011, a 16.9% increase from the previous year, according to the Central Statistics Office.

[Amberdawn]

Hell, most of us would be happy with $350.00 a week.

[FormerACLUmember]

You know how to crush a Celtic Tiger?

Put some socialist vermin in power.

[Incorrigible]

Bump

[kearnyirish2]

“You know how to crush a Celtic Tiger?

Put some socialist vermin in power.”

The Celtic Tiger grew because of its low tax rates (which drew foreign investment); conditions elsewhere caused it to crumble. Like the US, the handwriting was on the wall when many guest workers started leaving Ireland.