Up the Republic! - Fintan O'Toole

In
this important book, historians, lawyers, economists and writers come
together to put a coherent case: that although the Irish economic
collapse has resulted in national humiliation, renewed emigration and a
decline in living standards for the majority of the population, there is
still hope that the country can be reformed and renewed.

Irish
politicians offered the now notorious blanket guarantee to all the banks
which had got in over their heads during the great property bubble -
including one that had become little more than a criminal enterprise. A
different set of politicians grimly enforces the consequences of that
guarantee, locking an entire generation of Irish men and women into
paying for the mistakes of greedy bankers and their corrupt friends in
government.

The energy of hope has to come from elsewhere. These
essays demonstrate how simple measures and different economic and social
policies could release that energy and fulfil the promise of an
educated, literate and culturally vibrant people.