Restructuring and Recovery of the Irish Financial Sector: An Economic Case History

During the years 2003 to 2008, the Irish domestic financial sector experienced a very fast and poorly controlled expansion, followed by a dramatic collapse. The causes of the Irish credit bubble and bust have been exhaustively examined; see for example Connor et al. (2012), Honohan (2010), Nyberg (2011), Regling and Watson (2010) and additional references therein. Over the next six years, from late 2008 to 2014, the Irish financial sector went through a painful restructuring and slow, modestly successful, recovery. This paper provides an economic analysis of the Irish financial sector’s restructuring and recovery period. The paper considers both domestic and foreign banks operating in Ireland, household and corporate debt, property and other asset markets, and business investment. We analyse what the Irish experience tells us about the economic theory of post-crisis financial sector restructuring and recovery strategies