euro|topics - Fintan O'Toole

22/11/2008

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O'Toole, Fintan

2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

The Irish Times - Ireland | 21/11/2007

The Celtic Tiger is well and truly dead

Fintan O'Toole notes the demise of the 'Celtic Tiger', i.e. the Irish economic boom. "Ever since the slump that followed the attacks on the US in September 2001, the classic Irish boom has been a thing of the past. If most of us haven't noticed, it's because the money has been flowing in regardless. The boom in exports was replaced by two related booms - in property prices and construction, and in consumer spending. ... This has created an American-style economy in which people borrow money to buy more stuff and economic growth becomes dependent on the insatiable appetites of consumers. If the real boom of the 1990s and early 2000s was about us importing American capital and exporting American products, the second boom has been, logically enough, about us becoming American consumers. We've replaced the public debt of the 1980s with private debt."

The Irish Times - Ireland | 25/04/2006

The lessons of Chernobyl

Columnist Fintan O'Toole urges readers to reject nuclear power. "Human incompetence, terrorist attacks, the transport of nuclear materials and natural disasters (the Asian tsunami in December 2004 actually hit India's Kalpakkam nuclear power plant) are all real. So is the astronomical cost of cleaning up the radioactive mess that nuclear power stations leave behind. The British Nuclear Decommissioning Agency estimates the cost of fulfilling its current remit at £62.7 billion. And that waste remains dangerous for, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of years - a legacy we have no right to leave to future generations. Sherlock Holmes famously maintained that the way to solve a crime was to start by excluding the impossible. In solving the gathering energy crisis, we have to start by excluding the unacceptable - and that includes nuclear power."

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