Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the "Celtic Tiger" [Hardcover]

If you are Irish this book will make you very angry, if you're not I suppose you'll be entitled to wonder if we are actually capable of governing ourselves. O'Toole pushes all the buttons; financial scandals from DIRT evasion to the curious state of Bertie Ahern's finances, the madness of the property boom, the scandals involving the Catholic church, and the shortcomings of Ireland's current political system to mention but a few. Through it all he reminds us of the Irish people's capacity for Doublethink, our ability to know something but not know it, whether it concern Charlie Haughey's dubiously acquired wealth or the paedophile scandals currently rocking the nation. O'Toole is not trying to be objective here, he states at the beginning of the book that he has set out to write a polemical, in this he more than succeeds, rarely has a book made me so angry... or depressed. O'Toole makes it abundantly clear that we are the architects of our own misfortune, that we squandered our opportunity to definitively break with the economic misery that dominated our history until the dawn of the Celtic Tiger in the mid 1990s, that we got ahead of ourselves and forgot to fix the structural problems that remained throughout the period of economic boom, such as our bloated and inefficient health system. O'Toole does strike some notes of hope at the end, he belatedly reminds us that we are a capable people and that we can pull ourselves out of this, it's just going to be a slow and painful process. This book is a must read, you may not agree with all of O'Toole's points but it is a useful contribution to the ongoing debate about the causes and likely outcomes of Ireland's current economic crisis.

In my opinion, Fintan O'Tool is without doubt one of Ireland's best journalists. His articles are always well researched and his opinions well reasoned. 'Ship of Fools' is a sceptical takes on Ireland's economic miracle and it's subsequent collapse and it's well up with O'Tool's usual high standards.

He begins by detailing Irish bank scams that many of us may have forgotten about. This includes the Ansbacher debacle and the DIRT tax scandals where thousands of people evaded tax by claiming to their bank managers (who in many cases would have known them and actually helped them with the scams) that they didn't live in the state. Immediately a very pertinent point is made. Banks didn't just recently become unethical, they have a track record of having a poor moral compass and that's something we Irish seemed to forget about.

The book covers a wide range of fiascos from the failure of Eircom to roll out world class broadband (despite a small few investors making millions from it) to the tax scams that prop up the IFSC. But, it's the societal and economic failures of the banks and political class that ensured the property boom with end in tears that form the main part of that book. No analysis of that could omit the King of Charlatans, Mr. C. J. Haughey. O'Tool reminds us that the Irish tax payer paid 500,000 for this man's funeral who amongst a very long litany of poor ethics took 250,000 out of a colleagues liver transplant fund. But it was an entire political class that seemed categorically incompetent or absolutely aloof from people they ruled. For example, the Kenny report which was commissioned to advice on how to deal with property booms made some very simple suggestions, including that land could and should be compulsory purchased by local authorities at a market price plus 25%. This was to keep it away from land speculators. But alas it was completely ignored. A few more bad political decisions (such as ignoring the Bacon report and not allowing full public visibility into land and property transactions) meant that when the boom came, house prices increased 4 times faster than building costs, 5 times average industrial earnings and over 7 times the increases in consumer price index! Hardly sustainable.
This book would seriously make me wonder how stupid we Irish people are. Sometimes in public discourse, our colonial past is blamed for our shortcomings today. But there are many problems where we simply cannot resort to this silly proverbial claptrap.
My only criticism of this excellent book is the absence of some references. In most cases, there isn't really a need but in some parts a simple reference would ensure complete authenticity. For example, he makes some points about the low number of people in careers such as medicine and law whose parents do not come from these careers, using a range of percentages that have no references. Elsewhere, he claims that in 2005 the IFSC accounted of 75% of all foreign investment in Ireland. Very interesting, more than likely true but again no references.

Pedantry aside, overall his thesis is very well argued. It makes his opening point about the ludicrousness of Mr.Ahern's public speaking company charging up to 30,000 for him to speak about the great Irish economy very convincing. It also makes his opinion that what happened in Ireland in economic terms wasn't a miracle more than just plausible. Perhaps we were just playing catch up with our EU partners who helped us get there. We only got ahead of ourselves because we riddled the country with tax scams and sloppy politics. For that we only have ourselves to blame and we only have to the EU to thank for things would surely be far worse right now without them.

Overall this is an excellent book. A must read for every Irish person. Especially every Irish tax paying Pprson!

A clear, devastating and clinical analysis of how the Irish economy became the basket case of the EU. Fintan O'Toole lays out the jaw-dropping corruption, arrogant stupidity and cupidity thathas brought Ireland to its knees in a readable, often savagely funny account that had me gripped even though I'm not particularly interested in the subject.