The Finance Dublin Irish Government Debt Clock was set at midnight on June 30th 2009, when it was €65.278 billion. It updates the latest official figure for the National Debt of Ireland and since then, the clock has been re-set regularly to reflect changes in debt and GDP figures from the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), and the CSO.
The Debt Clock, launched in July 2009, surpassed €85 billion by the end of December 2010, and it continued to rise precipitously in 2011 and 2012, slowing eventually in 2013. The blog published by Finance Dublin charted the rise of the debt through this period in Irish economic history of the worst and most challenging phases of the Irish debt crisis. It argued consistently against calls by many economists and commentators, despairing of the potential of the open economy model for the Irish economy followed since the sixties, to default on the national debt. In the end the view prevailed and few since then question that this was the correct strategy as the Irish economy turned around to record 7 p.c. growth in 2015, coinciding with a fall in the debt-GDP ratio as dramatic on the downside as was experienced in the first years of the crisis. For a blow-by-blow account of those years, click on the link above.
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