
What is even more remarkable than the sunshine is the number of half-completed houses. It's disturbing to walk along perfect tarmac roads and footpaths laid out for entire housing estates that have not been built - and probably never will be.
It's a salutary reminder of the madness that gripped the country after 2001. And as a fascinating paper published with today's Central Bank forecasts (even gloomier than climate change ones for a change) points out: much of our growth during the 1992-2000 period was due to a sharp rise in productivity (the delta a variable in the table above that I've created from three separate tables in the paper); but its fall in 2001-2007 was a sign of our investing in housing estates rather than factories during the ensuing madness.
Even a sunny day in Donegal can't take away from the sadness of so much malinvestment and wasted opportunity. We'll never see the like of it again (I hope).
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