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Any other business

Ireland's back, and luck had nothing to do with it

Plus: Osborne must review green levies on flights; a curse prevents me from bidding for the Royal Exchange building

16 November 2013

9:00 AM

16 November 2013

9:00 AM

My man in Dublin calls with joy in his voice to tell me ‘the Troika’ — the combined powers of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF — have signed off Ireland as fit to leave their bailout programme and return to economic self-determination. This is a remarkable turnaround in just three years since I visited the Irish capital in the midst of rescue talks — to find a nation in shock, staring at an €85 billion emergency loan facility that equated to €20,000 per citizen, a collapsing banking system and a landscape scarred by delusional, never-to-be-finished property developments....

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