When Irish Eyes Are Not Smiling; A Subdued St. Paddy's Day

The banking crisis in Ireland, the subject of BS&T's lead story right now, is being heavily featured on public radio this St. Patrick's Day, when Irish eyes aren't smiling so much.New York public radio WNYC this morning spoke to Fintan O'Toole, a star columnist with The Irish Times and former New York Daily News drama critic, about the aftermath of Ireland's burst property bubble, and later to Niall O'Dowd, publisher of the U.S. weekly newspaper The Irish Voice.

On Saturday, All Things Considered, a national show from NPR, spoke with another Irish Times writer Ann Marie Hourihan, author of a book about Ireland's reign as The Celtic Tiger. She is working on a sequel to that book, 'She Moved Through the Boom,' ironically entitled, 'She Moved Through the Gloom.'

Although NPR paired Hourihan with an Icelandic journalist, BS&T's story shows that comparisons between Ireland and Iceland, though good for a gag, are economically unfounded. Moreover, Irish banks may be more inclined than their U.S. counterparts to buy into IT as a route out of their particular experience of the global credit crunch.