Celtic tiger

"Celtic Tiger" (Irish: An Tíogar Ceilteach) is a term referring to the economy of the Republic of Ireland from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, a period of rapid real economic growth fuelled by foreign direct investment. The boom was destroyed by a subsequent property bubble which rendered the real economy uncompetitive.

At the start of the 1990s, Ireland was a poor country by West European standards, with high poverty, unemployment, inflation, and low growth. The Irish economy expanded at an average rate of 9.4% between 1995 and 2000 following the institution of free education to second level and then third level, which produced a generation of well-educated entrepreneurs, and continued to grow at an average rate of 5.9% during the following decade until 2008, when it fell into recession. Ireland's rapid growth has been described as a rare example of a Western country to match the growth of East Asian nations, i.e. the 'Four Asian Tigers'.

The economy underwent a dramatic reversal from 2008, hit hard by the European economic crisis, with GDP contracting by 14% and unemployment levels rising to 14% by 2011. A report from March 2011 said that Ireland's per capita income fell back to pre-growth 1990s levels. However, since 2014 Ireland has been slowly recovering.

The colloquial term "Celtic Tiger" has been used to refer to the country itself, and to the years associated with the boom. The first recorded use of the phrase is in a 1994 Morgan Stanley report by Kevin Gardiner. The term refers to Ireland's similarity to the East Asian Tigers: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan during their periods of rapid growth in the early 1960s and late 1990s. An Tíogar Ceilteach, the Irish language version of the term, appears in the official terminology database and has been used regularly in government and administrative contexts since at least 2005.

The Celtic Tiger period has also been called "The Boom" or "Ireland's Economic Miracle". During that time, the country experienced a period of economic growth that transformed it from one of Western Europe's poorer countries into one of its wealthiest. The causes of Ireland's growth are the subject of some debate, but credit has been primarily given to state-driven economic development; social partnership among employers, government and trade unions; increased participation by women in the labour force; decades of investment in domestic higher education; targeting of foreign direct investment; a low corporation tax rate; an English-speaking workforce; and membership of the European Union, which provided transfer payments and export access to the Single Market.

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