A stroll through Dublin – and a chat with the president – to check the pulse of Ireland

Frank Kane checks out, at first hand, the economic recovery in Ireland.

You might regard two weeks on the beautiful west coast of Ireland with your wife and child as a holiday; I prefer to see it as an extended exercise in comparative economic analysis.

Having lived in the midst of the UAE’s economic recovery for the past couple of years, I decided it was time to assess the condition of another part of the world that suffered during the economic crisis – Ireland, birthplace of the Kane clan and to which I still owe allegiance as a citizen, despite having now lived longer in Dubai than I ever did in Dublin or any other Irish city.

I can report that Ireland is back. Certainly not to the extent of the UAE, and perhaps not as quickly as neighbouring Britain. And maybe not to its previous vertiginous heights.

But the country has made a decent fist of it, as they say, and deserves congratulations for pulling itself out of the mire, with a little help from its friends in Frankfurt and Washington. It can now take part again in the global financial process on meaningful investment terms.

However, I wasn’t there to compare CDS spreads, but to test the economic pulse of the people at street level. Dublin was its usual concoction of brash shabbiness, but hotel rates and occupancies were high, and the tourist surge was in full swing. There were fewer cranes in evidence than the last time I was there, before the property crash, which is a good thing.

You cannot get a real feel for the Irish recovery on a couple of nights in one of the fun capitals of the world. For that, you need to get out among the people of Connemara, the real salt of the Irish earth.

There was a property boom in this western part of County Galway in 2008-09, though it was less explosive than the one on the east coast. Farming, fishing and tourism were always the mainstays of the west’s economy.

I chose as my temporary research base the Renvyle House Hotel, a place that has seen booms and busts (and its fair share of tragedy) in the past.

I’ve stayed there a couple of times before, and it really is a wonderful old house. The comparison with the UAE doesn’t really work at Renvyle because it isn’t at all about luxury or glamour. The emphasis is totally on rest and relaxation, and it is great at that.

But business was booming. As far as I could tell, the hotel was at least 90 per cent occupied for the duration I was there, and on a couple of occasions was positively bulging at the seams.

Once was for a wedding of a couple from Galway city who had chosen the hotel as the venue for their nuptial celebrations. Turnover must have soared that evening, much of it from the hard core of guests who were still toasting the bride and groom when we came down for breakfast the following morning.

The other time the hotel was buzzing was for the visit of Michael Higgins, the Irish president. It’s not often you get the chance to small-talk with a head of state, but the president was there to celebrate his 40th wedding anniversary and happy and relaxed to chat, even with a journalist from the UAE.

We had a friend in common in Abu Dhabi in the form of the Irish ambassador there, Pat Hennessy, and swapped some stories.

So the Irish economy, on my informal methodology, is in recovery mode. The only problem is I think I’ll need another month of field research to do the job properly.

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