Talk:Economy of the Republic of Ireland

The Welfare State - health service

Please review the edits re: the health service. They are accurate, though they may need presented in a more NPOV way. This is difficult, as essentially the health service in Ireland is a disaster by all accounts and absolutely diabolical. I mean, 170 patients on trolleys in corridors awaiting A&E treatment without any kind of national emergency (apart from the situation itself) is fairly appalling. This was the situation a day or two ago.

The two-tier health system is also well documented - it exists. How one describes it in any kind of neutral way without hiding that fact, I do not know. zoney ♣ talk 21:17, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Agreed that their is a severe problem with the health service in Ireland ("The Eleven Kingdoms") but it is important that it should not outweight an article on the economy. Djegan 21:36, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The health section is still a bit POV; it could do with a bit of international perspective instead of sounding like a shrill TV3 news segment. The article does not distinguish between elective and non-elective procedures in public health; the former are free to everyone. Also, while the description of the medical card system mentions a figure of a million people, it seems to describe the system as being available to only the completely indigent. In fact almost 40% of the population is covered by the medical card system. jimg

FAC objections

These objections need to be addressed by someone with more competence than I possess. Filiocht 13:34, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

• Object. Certainly not bad, but I have some issues: 1) The article is called "Economy of Ireland", but appears to be only about the Republic of Ireland. This should be corrected (either the title should change or the contents should reflect it is also about Northern Ireland). 2) The history has almost nothing on the early history. Everyting up to 1848 is covered in a single sentence, and 3/4 of the section is about the 20th century or later. This trend is noticeable troughout the entire article; the present and recent past are getting most of the attention. I understand this is the period for which most information is available, but a better overview is really needed for an encyclopedia. In addition, this makes the article read rather "dated" at times: "In 1999, trade between Ireland and the United States was worth around $18.5 billion, a 24% increase over 1998." looks like the last information on this is already 5 years old. 3) Some additional figures for the history section (or elsewhere) to compare would also be nice. I can think of graphs or tables with the GPD or inflation (or other indicators) every so many years (10, 20). 4) "Recent economic circumstances" should be merged with the history. 2000-2004 is as much part of history as all years before. 5) I don't think there is a reason to keep all of the information that is left over from the CIA book. Some of this information is really not very useful (such as the historic exchange rates in US$), others are duplicates of the information in the table. The rest could probably be integrated with that table as well (I like the table). Jeronimo 19:33, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Republic of Ireland didn't exist before 1922. I've moved content from prior to that to the Economy of Ireland article. Nicely divides the content and gets around the "not enough pre-20th century content". Also we can later work on Economy of Ireland. zoney ♣ talk 11:55, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm not entirely happy with this solution: strictly speaking the Republic of Ireland came into existence in 1949 (or 1916 for the romantically inclined). 1922 has nothing to do withthe founding of the republic. This article should really be Economy of the Irish Free State and Republic of Ireland now. I personally would have preferred a real Economy of Ireland article: all the island from early modern period on. As it stands, a summary of this article will have to be incorporated back into Economy of Ireland now. Filiocht 12:32, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Also this sentence: 'The country has a total of 36 airports and airfields, of which 4 - Dublin Airport, Shannon International Airport, Cork International Airport and Belfast International Airport are of a substantial size.' needs changing. How many of the 36 are in the republic? and the 4 becomes 3? and Belfast airport goes? Filiocht 12:35, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

Ah. Good arguments. Perhaps we need to rename this to Economy of Ireland in the 20th century?

Quite obviously, my actions were a result of the ill-fitting title of "Economy of the Republic of Ireland". Evidently this is (still) an inappropriate title for the content on the page. How are we going to organise things? zoney ♣ talk 13:16, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Moved from defunct split, comments may or may not be valid:

The Republic of Ireland did not exist prior to 1922. So with the main economy article being moved to Economy of the Republic of Ireland, it doesn't make sense to have (much) pre-1922 content there. The pre-1922 content is somewhat awkward to classify as "Economy of the Republic of Ireland", not to mention pre-1949. And this article has all-island content post-1922 also.

Also this is the ideal page title under which to write about the economic effects of partition, as the final section.

This new article needs a lot of work - Ireland's 19th century in particular was noteworthy. I think the relevant section here is not accurate in its depiction of Ireland at that time - I think we did have more industry, albeit concentrated mostly around Belfast and to some degree in Dublin.

But economy is more than industry, and the article does not go into depth on the agricultural economy of the time. All the market towns of Ireland for example, how they came about.

Going back earlier, what about the Vikings? They had economy. What about Ireland's coastal cities? Galway for example was rich from sea trade.

Much work to be done. zoney ♣ talk 12:18, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Education

This sentence sounds weird to me, I can't really place the context or meaning of it. "The Institute of Technology system has recently overtaken the universities in terms of first year enrollment numbers and this trend appears to be accelerating; this is the realisation of the binary system's strength in Ireland."

That last part in bold seems to be misusing the phrase "binary system", especially since there is a link to Binary. --rimbaud 15:54, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

As you pointed out it is linked to the Binary page which states:

In higher education, an education system that includes both polytechnic, or college, and university style institutions. These institutions are often intended to complement each other and form an important basis in the overall education policy and infrastructure of a country or region.

Applying that meaning to the word binary in the sentence you quoted allows the sentence to make complete sense (now thats a mouthful!) CGorman 17:40, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Economy of the North

Can anyone tell me the situation of the economy in the North in terms of growth, strong sectors, contribution to British economy and budget surplus(if applicable). All I know is it's doing better after the troubles. I'm trying to improve the articles on Ireland in the French wikipedia and they're missing info on the North. Thanks in advance.- Dalta 15:53, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I can't find any figures newer than 1997-98, but the NI economy has actually been hit badly, not impoved, since then. Loss of Harland and Wolf, most of Bombardier, call centres fleeing, etc has reduced the jobs, etc

In 1997, Northern Ireland took £3.4B in direct subvention from Great Britian. It didn't have a budget surplus, obviously. This isn't even taking into account whatever proportion of the UK's military spending goes into NI... --Kiand 15:57, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)