The Rise of the Celtic Tiger

Abstract

During the 1960s, real GDP per capita in Ireland increased by 38 percent; during the Seventies it rose by 35 percent; in the course of the Eighties it grew by 28 percent, but in the Nineties it skyrocketed by 90 percent, from $15,084 in 1990 to $25,622 in 1999. The high economic growth rates in the 1990s—which earned Ireland the title Celtic Tiger—were driven by large inflows of foreign investment into the electronics, software, medical appliances, and pharmaceutical sectors.¹ By the early twenty-first century, however, the Celtic Tiger started to linger. Growth rates tapered off to 3 to 4 percent, some TNCs in the electronics industry started to leave the isle, and unemployment was on the rise again.