Two Nobel laureates during the centenary year of the epic event of the Irish Revolution – the 1916 Rising – have been highly critical of the Irish state. Paul Krugman has mocked Irish growth statistics as ‘leprechaun economics’ (2016a), meaning trickster economics. More ominously, Joseph Stiglitz has called Irish taxation policy ‘corrupt’ and accused Ireland of ‘robbing developing countries’ and the United States, which sounds like a warning to a rogue state (The Irish Times, 31 August 2016). Ireland, according to The Irish Times (1 October 2016), is sometimes regarded as beyond the European Pale because it lacks its ‘enlightened’ core values: post-nationalism, advanced secularism, scepticism about market values, low tolerance of violence and a strong belief in the ethos of the welfare state. Are these profoundly negative characterisations of Ireland justified? Or is Ireland, as represented by the UN Human Development Index 2015, one of the best countries in the world in terms of quality of life? Carmen Kuhling and Kieran Keohane (2007: 206-7) observe:

Arguably, Ireland's failure to move beyond a historic residual welfare state model, within what is essentially a competition state, has had very serious social policy consequences in terms of the well-being and social equality of the Irish population.