However, as Martin Malone of Mint Partners put it bluntly, “The entire increase from 2007–2012 in Ireland’s service exports is almost complete fluff … they are overstated by Euro 30 billion, which as a measure versus GNP comes to almost 25 percent of the total.” This overstatement of export-led recovery explains why unemployment has risen steadily, from 4.5 percent in 2007 to 14.8 percent by in mid-2012, even as emigration has risen notably, from 46,300 in 2007 to 80,600 in 2011 despite this supposed boom. Irish debt to GDP was 32 percent in 2007. Today it stands at 108.2 percent after three years of austerity. Indeed, if the cost of NAMA is added to the national accounts, its Ireland’s debt-to-GDP-ratio would rival that of Greece. Ireland bailed its banks, and then banked on an export-led recovery without a devaluation that was based upon phantom exports that create very few jobs and that are only made possible by tax dodging. Apparently this is Greece’s role model.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 636