Crouching tiger

For those who haven’t been to Ireland in the past decade, a walk through Dublin’s docks would offer a better insight into how the country has reinvented itself than any graph plotting GDP growth. Established in 1997, the Docklands Authority has created a modern financial harbour that befits a country that has become a major player in the IT and investment funds industries.

Indeed, since the mid-1990s, Ireland has undergone a period of sustained growth so dramatic that in 2007, per capita GDP surpassed that of the US. Even the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2001/02 had a limited effect, with GDP growth slowing to a still robust 5%. Therefore, understandably, confidence that the market will absorb any possible shock remains high.

In fact, in the last 12 months, the ISEQ index (the Irish Stock Exchange) has recorded an astonishing fall of 53%. To put this into perspective, the Wall Street Crash represented a drop of 60% during a longer three-year period. On 11 July, ?3bn was wiped off the value of shares in Dublin. On 14 July, Irish broker Davy responded by announcing it was looking to axe 10% to 15% of its workforce, sending a clear signal to the rest of the market that the much-hyped crash was finally around the corner. ‘Twenty years ago, if someone had called this a “bust” period, we would have laughed in their faces,’ Imelda Reynolds, property partner at Beauchamps Solicitors says. ‘Although we’re quieter, we are still busy. But after 15 years of sustained vigorous growth, these are uncharted waters for us.’

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