An Irish landscape of boom and bust

Tully meets with Ireland's Tánaiste (or deputy prime minister) Mary Coughlan, the second-in-command of a nation whose economy has ground to a halt. Though the country still has vast potential for exports and could rebound strongly as global growth resumes, the government¹s challenge is to rein in a soaring budget deficit, a legacy of years of profligate spending that was fueled by a tax windfall from the biggest real estate bubble in Europe. When that bubble collapsed early last year, so did the revenue the government was banking on.

NEXT: At the school of Irish presidents