Analysis: Euro strugglers eye Ireland for crisis lessons
By Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - To the relief of its creditors, Ireland is showing the rest of the struggling euro zone periphery that fiscal and wage discipline will eventually be rewarded by the bond markets, if not appreciated by the man in the street.
A less heartening lesson is that throwing away the crutch of IMF and EU support, as Dublin is likely to be able to do later this year, is no ticket back to pre-crisis prosperity: nations on the euro zone's rim have dug a debt hole so deep that they face years more of morale-sapping austerity and sub-par growth.
"In all of these countries, it's going to take the rest of the decade to bring debt down to more comfortable levels," said Douglas Renwick with Fitch Ratings in London.
Take Ireland itself. The country is held up as a model pupil for the way it has complied with a loans-for-reforms rescue program agreed with the ‘troika' of the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank after a banking crisis toppled its economy in 2008.
"Ireland is not in any sense in good shape," Kirkegaard said. "There are lessons to be learned for the rest of the euro area from Ireland. But the idea that you can get through a crisis of the magnitude that Ireland has had in just a few years is not one of them."
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