Customer Reviews

Inside the Celtic Tiger: The Irish Economy and the Asian Model (Contemporary Irish Studies)

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A well written, balanced, and thought-provoking account of the Irish economic phenomenon. Denis O'Hearn confirms that government intervention has played an important role in boosting Ireland's growth. The IDA's gamble in offering huge incentives to Intel to locate near Dublin, for instance, has paid off in a big way. But he tempers his analysis by drawing attention to the way that misleading GDP numbers have overstated the Irish economy's true rate of growth. Displaying an exceptionally well informed understanding of the East Asian tigers, he correctly concludes that Ireland's effort to build its economic prowess, while impressive by European standards, falls short in many respects compared to that of nations like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. Eamonn Fingleton, author of "In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, is the Key to Future Prosperity" ( to be published by Houghton Mifflin in June 1999).

A well written, balanced, and thought-provoking account of the Irish economic phenomenon. O'Hearn confirms that government intervention has played an important role in boosting Ireland's growth. The IDA's gamble in offering huge incentives to Intel to locate near Dublin, for instance, has paid off in a big way. But he tempers analysis by drawing attention to the way that misleading GDP numbers have overstated the Irish economy's true rate of growth.

Eamonn Fingleton, author of "In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, is the Key to Future Prosperity" ( to be published by Houghton Mifflin in June 1999).

Enjoyed this account of the Irish economy. There are some good insights into the nature of technology lead industrialization, and some of the distortions and exaggerations caused by such development. O'Hearn does a good job at deflating some of the euphoria over high tech in Ireland.

At the same time, the tone of pessimism pervading the book seems unwarranted. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are vilified, and even Singapore is criticized for adopting a similar model for national development. MNCs have real issues but on the whole deserve higher marks than what O'Hearn grants them. O'Hearn also bemoans that Irish workers are often assigned more mundane tasks like software localization, comparing the work to that of mind numbing sweatshops or assembly lines. Ireland's contributions to the IT industry should be a source of pride, and the opportunity to take leadership will arise as a natural outgrowth of the industry's voracious appetite for talent, just as advanced R&D has taken root in Israel, India, and other places.