"TAP não sobrevive se se mantiver pública", garante Pinto Luz

[atomez]

Na Irlanda tiveram a coragem de fazer logo o que era preciso fazer, doesse a quem doesse. E não houve manifs nem greves. Mas agora são os primeiros a recuperar.

Nos climas mais amenos prefere-se adiar as medidas dolorosas e ir fazendo as coisas aos bocadinhos... e nunca mais se sai da cepa torta.

Ireland Shows Revival Signs, Offers Lesson to Greece

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Ireland, which endured one of the worst recessions of any developed economy since the Great Depression, is showing signs of reviving.

The economy may be expanding again after shrinking 7 percent in 2009, economists say. Growth will hit 3 percent next year, almost twice the euro-area average, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said on May 27.

“We’re close to the bottom,” Irish central bank Governor Patrick Honohan said in a May 28 interview in his Dublin office. “Here at the central bank, we are projecting an upturn in the second half of 2010.”

Irish exports will rise this year for the first time since 2007, the OECD said. That’s helping Ireland pull out of the slump even as it continues the spending cuts started in 2008 to reduce Europe’s biggest deficit. Ireland’s ISEQ benchmark stock index has risen 2 percent in the last six months those of while Greece, Portugal and Spain, which have been slower to tackle deficits, have fallen by an average 24 percent.

“It’s a rebound, a significant signal to Greece to swallow the pill and move on,” said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING Group in Brussels. “Whether it means that the Celtic Tiger is back and the outlook rosy remains to be seen.”

Wage Cuts

Ireland’s economy shrank about 10 percent in the last two years as a decade-long real-estate boom imploded. The country’s financial system came close to collapse, unemployment surged to a 15-year high and the budget gap widened to 14.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2009.

The government raised a sales tax in 2008, introduced an income levy and cut public workers’ pay by an average of 13 percent to tame the deficit.

Now, 18 months on from the first fiscal measures, retail sales are increasing. Irish consumer confidence stayed close to a 2 1/2-year high in May, a report today showed.

At Arnotts, Ireland’s largest department store, workers have returned to a full 37 1/2-hour week after losing 2 1/2 hours in February.

It was “really terrible last year,” David Riddiford, chief executive officer of the downtown Dublin store, said in an interview. “Now there seems to be some kind of stabilization. We can’t keep the Irish depressed for very long.”