The social damage austerity is causing in Portugal is immense. Unlike Ireland, in Portugal protests disrupted the economy. From June to November 2013 there were 473 strike days in the transport sector alone.(…)
Ireland can be quite insular when it comes to thinking about its economy, and tends to see itself as exceptional in both the boom and bust phases of the past few years. I hope you can see the Portuguese story is very, very similar to ours.(…)
It may take a generation to understand just how damaging austerity really was, and soon we will be able to compare Cyprus and Greece.