Wed, 23 Sep 2009 7:21p.m.
The recession in New Zealand is technically over. We went into recession before much of the rest of the world, and it may be that we're turning the corner earlier too.
It's one of those terrible clichés of journalism, but only time will tell.
For a while there, another cliché was the one about the Irish economy - the magnificent Celtic tiger, we should do what they were doing - and we would be alright.
How has Ireland survived the global recession? Not very well at all, it seems. Their unemployment rate is roughly double ours.
Ireland was the ultimate rags to riches story. Hailed as an economic miracle, it became a poster child for New Zealand and the rest of the world.
Between the mid 1990s and 2007, Ireland went from one of Europe's poorest countries to one of the wealthiest. The growth was fuelled by low corporate tax and access to the EU, and employment almost doubled.
The growth changed the face of Ireland. Rich for the first time, it could afford massive development. New homes, offices, hotels, infrastructure. Ireland became trendy and modern.
The development of new houses knew no bounds. At the height of the boom in 2006, Ireland was building more homes per head than anywhere else in the world. Nearly 90,000 were built in that year alone.
New suburbs and entire new towns sprung up. The newfound wealth encouraged the Irish to borrow even more, and they bought up large.
At the time, New Zealand politicians tried to copy what Ireland did right.
Aoife Rhattigan and her partner Greg Maher are part of the young Irish generation that have only known wealth and good times. They bought their three-bedroom duplex in west Dublin for €375,000.
"We drew down the mortgage two years later for €345,000 and so we started paying it off bit by bit, then all of a sudden, the rug pulled out from under our feet, everything gone, you're left with a big mortgage," says Mr Mahyer.
Over 10 years, property prices increased five-fold. But this kind of growth couldn't be sustained.
Carl Griffin is an engineer who owns two central Dublin properties, one to live in and one an investment.
"Generally I think most Irish people will admit that even a year ago, they thought property prices would never go down," he says. "A whole country of people thinking that property prices would never go down in - insane in hindsight."
"We now think that the Irish economy will contract something in the order of about 12 or 15 percent," says Alan Barrett, Economic, Social & Research Institute. "That would make it the biggest contraction in the industrialised world since the Great Depression."
Both Ms Rhattigan and Mr Maher have lost their jobs. As a crane driver, he had been earning good money - up to NZ$140,000 a year - she was an interior designer.
So why did the Irish property bubble burst so suddenly?
"I think it was the combination of jitters emerging in the Irish economy, combined then with this major crash, meant that Ireland simply came tumbling down," says Mr Barrett.
People got spooked. Interest rates rose and easy credit dried up.. Suddenly the demand for new homes was gone.
There are blocks of finished apartments - ready to move into, but lying empty.
Entire office blocks are also dormant.
Brand new homes sit beside wasteland - developments suddenly abandoned as the money dried up.
"I think in the later part of the boom, Irish people were in a sense deluded in thinking there was real economic activity going on here, which really wasn't quite the case," says Mr Barrett.
Mr Griffin lives in Dublin's newly developed docklands now, on a 12 percent pay cut.
"As well as falling pay, rents are falling as well so rental income doesn't pay the mortgage on the second so I'm subsidising that with my own reduced salary," he says.
Kiwi economist Bernard Hickey believes New Zealand is similar, but with a couple of important differences.
"Ireland had an economy which was almost all the housing market with very little tacked on," he says. "We are still a housing market with quite a few things tacked on, in particular our dairy sector and some export earnings.
"The big difference too between ourselves and Ireland is that we had a strong banking sector, whereas Ireland didn't. Many of the Irish banks lent money into the crazy American sub-prime markets or relied on wholesale markets."
The Irish people Campbell Live spoke to agree with Mr Hickey.
In Ireland, unemployment is now at 12 percent and growing. But there is a glimmer of hope in New Zealand today - 0.1 percent of growth is enough to be saying the recession is over.