Juncker: Follow Ireland’s lead
It’s official! Ireland is being used as the poster boy for European recovery. Leaders from around the bloc are encouraging countries to follow Ireland’s recovery plans in attempt to maintain positivity in the EU.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg and who is in charge of the monthly meetings between the 17 euro-zone finance ministers, stated yesterday that Ireland’s backers were “very pleased” with the country’s progress.
“The euro-zone suffers from the fact that we seem always to be going on about the bad news and talking all the time about that.”Ireland, as far as competitiveness is concerned, lost out very considerably, but has now caught up half of the ground that it lost,” he said.
On the back of volatile markets, US credit downgrading and no progress on Greece’s second bailout, senior members of the European Commission and Central Bank returned yesterday to face questions from concerned European ministers. Several European governments are reconvening early to rush through the so-called July package to stabilise the Greek economy, which needs unanimous approval.
However, ministers are not worried about the Irish situation. We are being held up as the way forward. We are being touted as the EU’s good news story. We need to embrace this on our road to recovery. We have made back half our ground, now let’s make back the rest.
In Focus
NODE Architects Dave Egan Dave is a graduate of Bolton Street School of Architecture and a member of the RIAI. He worked with Noel O’Dwyer in Sam Stephenson & Company for two years after graduating and joined Duffy Mitchell Architects (later DMOD) in 1997. Over the course of 11 years with DMA/DMOD Dave designed and [...]
