The Irish Republic's Celtic Tiger economy, with full employment and growth rates at one stage reaching 10%, has collapsed.

It is forecast to contract by more than 9% this year alone and unemployment next year is forecast to reach 17%.

London calling

For James Mooney, 23, and his generation, the crash is particularly galling.

While Mr Mooney was studying to be a surveyor, his lecturer told them they would all be millionaires by the time they were 35, such was the construction and property boom at the time.

Instead he is one of the new breed of Irish emigrants, living in a house in London with five other Irish people in their twenties, in a position none of them ever dreamed they would face.

As a small open economy, Ireland could not escape the global recession. But it did not have to be this bad.

Ireland's troubles are doubled by the fact that, having started with proper export-led growth, it switched after 2001 into a consumer boom.

We were spending as if there was no tomorrow, particularly on property. We thought we had found the answer to everlasting economic growth and that answer was to build lots and lots of houses - and sell them to one another.

The government gave tax breaks for building, renting and buying houses.

People bought fistfuls of houses - for their children or as investments. Polish workers came in to help build the houses and then rented and lived in them.

The collapse, when it came, was quick and brutal.

The Irish banking system - to use a great Irish phrase - is effectively banjaxed.

All over the country there are ghost villages, schemes of new houses, half occupied or half finished.

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