Justin Gleeson

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

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 countrys recent history, but also heightens awareness of the how the Irish case might, in turn, instruct and illuminate mappings and explanations of neoliberalisms 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, neoliberalisms topologies and topographies, and accumulation by repossession.

The New Ruins of Ireland? Unfinished Estates in the Post‐Celtic Tiger Era

In the wake of the global financial crisis, and as Europes financial and fiscal woes continue, Irelands beleaguered economy has attracted a great deal of scrutiny, with much made of the countrys status as one of the PIIGS and the fact that it was bailed out by the troika of the IMF, EU and ECB in November 2010. Whilst most attention has been directed at Irelands banks and the strategy of the Irish government in managing the crisis, substantial interest (both nationally and internationally) has been focused on the property sector and in particular the phenomenon of so-called ‘ghost estates’ (or, in official terms, unfinished estates). As of October 2011 there were 2,846 such estates in Ireland, and they have come to visibly symbolize the collapse of Irelands ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. In this essay, we examine the unfinished estates phenomenon, placing them within the context of Irelands property boom during the Celtic Tiger years, and conceptualize them as ‘new ruins’ created through the search for a spatial fix by speculative capitalism in a time of neoliberalism. We detail the characteristics and geography of such estates, the various problems afflicting the estates and their residents, and the Irish governments response to those problems. In the final section we examine the estates as exemplars of new ruins, the remainder and reminder of Celtic Tiger excess.