Irish Economy: Ten years ago this week we asked the same question in an article headline as we do today. It was a time of optimism: almost 100,000 new jobs had been created in 2004; Citigroup, the US financial services giant, was the 2005 Irish Exporter of the Year, and in June of that year Thomas Friedman, chief foreign affairs columnist of The New York Times, wrote: “How Ireland went from the sick man of Europe to the rich man in less than a generation is an amazing story” — in 2006 we warned that the “outlook for the Celtic Tiger beyond 2008 looks uncertain, there is a sense that the significant opportunities to reform and modernise the economy to better withstand future challenges, have been wasted.”