Ireland on Sunday became the first eurozone nation to leave its bailout programme but celebrations were muted as the country faces more austerity despite the end of the three-year rescue package.
Dublin turned to the International Monetary Fund and European Union in November 2010 for an 85 billion euro ($115 billion) lifeline following a banking crash and one of history’s worst housing bubbles.
After painful belt-tightening, Ireland is now returning unaided to the international lending markets — while eurozone strugglers Greece, Portugal and Cyprus remain locked into the bailout process.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny was to deliver a state of the nation-type address on Irish television later Sunday, just the sixth time a Taoiseach has done so in Irish history other than during elections.
Ahead of Kenny’s speech, transport and tourism minister Leo Varadkar said Ireland was “back on track” thanks to the “sacrifices and resilience of the Irish people.”
“If you remember two and a half years ago when this government came to office, it was normal for people to be talking about the euro breaking up or talking about the country defaulting (on its debts),? he told RTE radio.
“We?re in a much better position now than any other European country that entered a bailout and many that didn?t.
“But there are of course vulnerabilities. Unemployment is still very high. There?s a big debt burden out there.”
‘Return to full health will take some time’
With the end of the bailout, Dublin will now have greater control over economic decision-making after three years of stringent oversight by the EU, IMF and the European Central Bank — the so-called troika of lenders.
The troika insisted on tax rises, structural reforms and the sale of state assets in exchange for the bailout, and assessed Ireland?s progress every three months.
Ireland has returned to growth, unemployment is falling and the banking sector has been reduced to a more appropriate scale to match the size of the economy, but analysts agree the banks remain a risk.
Irish newspapers said the country’s problems were not over, however.
“Like a patient discharged from the intensive care unit, the return to full health will take some time,” the Irish Sunday Times said in its editorial.
Apart from Kenny?s address to the nation, little is planned to mark the occasion.
Ireland did not face the same large-scale protests that hit Greece during the bailout years.
A poll on popular news website The Journal.ie on Sunday shows the level of apathy towards the bailout exit despite Dublin?s desire to frame the development in a positive light.
Of the almost 2,000 votes since the poll went live, over half selected “hearing about it makes me feel worse”, while only five percent said they felt happier.
‘The suffering isn’t over’
The IMF approved the 12th and last review of Ireland’s progress on Friday, allowing a final $890 million payout.
To mark the end of the bailout programme, the IMF?s managing director Christine Lagarde praised Ireland?s “steadfast policy implementation”.
But Lagarde warned of “significant economic challenges” ahead.
“Unemployment is too high, public debt sustainability remains fragile, and heavy private sector debts and banks? slow progress in resolving non-performing loans weigh on domestic demand,” she said in a statement.
Later this week, Dublin will publish a medium-term economic strategy outlining its post-bailout policies.
Much of the focus in the Irish Sunday newspapers was on the strategy and the possibility that austerity will ease after another tough annual budget next year.
The Sunday Independent reported that Dublin will promise to end austerity by 2016, in time for the next general election.
The Sunday Times suggests the plan will target a 4.2 percent unemployment rate by 2020, far from the current level of 12.8 percent and last year’s peak of 14.7 percent.
Advocacy groups warn that the most vulnerable in society will still suffer.
“There is a need for sensitivity. The suffering isn’t over,” John Dolan, chief executive of the Disability Federation of Ireland, told AFP.
Anna Doyle, 42, and her husband Ambrose from Ashford in County Wicklow, south of Dublin, both lost their jobs in June 2011 and have been searching for work ever since.
“It’s been really stressful and totally demoralising,” Doyle told AFP.
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