Topologies and topographies of Ireland's neoliberal crisis

Abstract

In this paper, we explore successive waves of neoliberalization in Ireland. We contend that neoliberalization remained largely “invisible” during the Celtic Tiger because a property bubble permitted a period of debt-driven growth, but was revealed and politicized by the crisis. Mobilizing the ideas of topology and topography, we explore the relationships which unfolded between the “financialization” of the global economy and the two twin pillars of the Irish crisis narrative: property and debt. We conclude that there is a need for future studies to consider how neoliberalism, financialization and uneven development are being reshaped by geographically situated responses to the crisis.

Keywords:

• neoliberalism
• Ireland
• property crash
• financial crisis
• ghost estates
• neoliberal topographies

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank David Featherstone, Daniel MacKinnon, and Ronan Paddison for their efforts in putting the special issue together. We would like to thank Rory Hearne, David Featherstone, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts. Finally, we would like to thank Justin Gleeson for producing the maps included in this article.

Notes

1. The six Irish financial institutions covered by the state's bank guarantee included Allied Irish Bank (AIB), Bank of Ireland (BoI), Anglo Irish Bank (Anglo), Irish Life and Permanent (ILP), Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) and the Educational Building Society (EBS).

2. A defining moment in this trajectory occurred in June 2013 when the Irish Independent made public a series of taped telephone conversations between senior bank managers at Anglo. In these conversations, recorded in September 2008 in the weeks leading up to the bailout, three senior executives, in vocabulary mixing gallows humour with ruthless “feral capitalism” (Harvey, 2012a), discuss what appears to be a concerted attempt to misrepresent the bank's levels of debt (an allegation the parties involved deny) in order to convince the Government to commit to a rescue package:

That number is seven [billion] but the reality is we need more than that. But you know, the strategy here is you pull them [the Central Bank] in, you get them to write a big cheque and they have to keep, they have to support their money, you know.

Additional information

Funding

The research included in this article was partly funded by the Irish Research Council.