Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy

By Conor McCabe

The questions surrounding how the Irish economy was brought to the brink – who was to blame, and who should pay for these mistakes – have been rightly debated at length. But beyond this very legitimate exercise, there are deeper questions that need to be answered.

These questions relate to why we made the decisions we did, not just in the last 10 years, but over the last 80. How did certain industries become prominent at the expense of others, banking as opposed to fisheries, international markets as opposed to indigenous industry and job creation?

Are our problems structural in nature, and most importantly, what do we need to know to make sure that this crisis does not happen again?

These are the questions set by this book. It will look at the development of the Irish economy over the past eight decades, and will argue that the 2008 financial crisis, up to and including the IMF bailout of 2010 and the subsequent change of government, cannot be explained simply by the moral failings of those in banking or property development alone. The problems are deeper, more intricate, and more dangerous if we remain unaware of them, but also potentially avoidable in the future if we break the cycle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781845887193

Reviews for Sins of the Father

[thegeneral_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is both a very interesting and entertaining book. The author, who subscribes to a socialist philosophy, presents an intuitive, coherent and highly readable study of how the Irish economy has arrived at its current position in 2011, which he argues can be traced back to certain crucial policy decisions taken by successive Governments after independence in 1922. These are outlined in the four main chapters on housing, agriculture, industry and finance. There then follows, in the final chapter, a very readable analysis of how the Bank Guarantee came into being and the author does plausibly link this event to the conclusion of his prior chapters. A readable, socialist historical analysis of the Irish economy does not appear very often (as it is atypical to the accepted orthodoxy) and this is what persuaded me to acquire the book and I have not been disappointed, indeed, while I do not agree with all of the hypotheses of the author he has persuaded me to read more particularly due to the helpful statistics referenced and used in the text. One thing I would say though is that while the author uses many endnotes to support his claims I would have expected a larger bibliography and in addition on occasion there appears to be something of an overreliance on newspapers such as the Irish Times throughout the book to support endnotes rather than use of book references which would be normal practice. Indeed several of the authors referenced in the bibliography only appear once in the entire text of the book.