Placing Neoliberalism: The Rise and Fall of Ireland's Celtic Tiger

Rob Kitchin, Cian O'Callaghan, Mark Boyle, Justin Gleeson and Karen Keaveney
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Karen Keaveney: School of Spatial Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Queens University Belfast, Belfast BT9 5AG, Northern Ireland

Environment and Planning A, 2012, vol. 44, issue 6, 1302-1326

Abstract: In this paper we provide an account of the property-led boom and bust which has brought Ireland to the point of bankruptcy. Our account details the pivotal role which neoliberal policy played in guiding the course of the country's recent history, but also heightens awareness of the how the Irish case might, in turn, instruct and illuminate mappings and explanations of neoliberalism's concrete histories and geographies. To this end, we begin by scrutinising the terms and conditions under which the Irish state might usefully be regarded as neoliberal. Attention is then given to uncovering the causes of the Irish property bubble, the housing oversupply it created, and the proposed solution to this oversupply. In the conclusion we draw attention to the contributions which our case study might make to the wider literature of critical human geographies of neoliberalism, forwarding three concepts which emerge from the Irish story which may have wider resonance, and might constitute a useful fleshing out of theoretical framings of concrete and particular neoliberalisms: path amplification, neoliberalism's topologies and topographies, and accumulation by repossession.

Keywords: Ireland; financial crisis; Celtic Tiger; housing; National Assets Management Agency; ghost estates; neoliberalism; path amplification; accumulation by repossession; neoliberal topographies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:6:p:1302-1326

DOI: 10.1068/a44349

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