During the crisis, I traced the evolution of the Irish economy. It was clear that the nation took a very big hit in the downturn – between 2007 and 2010 the economy shrunk by 15 per cent. Evidence also makes it clear that before the crisis, the narrative about the so-called Celtic Tiger miracle ignored the fact that a substantial portion of the growth was captured by foreign interests such are the taxation arrangements that attract foreign companies. Ireland also benefitted substantially from the growth in China and the US, and then the UK, all products of extended fiscal deficits. More recently, the impacts of the global tax structures and accounting nuances have significantly distorted the growth estimates for Ireland. In that context, to avoid becoming a laughing stock, the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) initiated a review of its national accounts framework and have now started to produce modified estimates of Gross National Income and some of the affected expenditure aggregates (Gross Fixed Capital Formation), which provide a very different picture indeed. While the official data suggests that the Irish economy grew by 39.7 per cent between 2007 and 2016, once the modifications were made to eliminate the distortions arising from these extraordinary global capital shifts, the Modified Gross National Income measure showed growth of only 12.2 per cent. In fact, the Irish economy in total is only 68 per cent the size that the GDP data would suggest – around a third smaller. Further, the modified Gross National Income series has barely grown since the crisis indicating that the Irish population has not received much in return for the hardships the austerity has inflicted upon them.