If you're a middle-class person visiting a pretty little city you've never seen before, you stop at the estate agent's window and fantasise about buying something. When I did that in Kilkenny in southern Ireland recently, I had a shock: it was affordable. A nice house round there can cost under EU150,000. The halving of property prices since the crash of 2008 is just one index of Irish suffering. A woman buttonholed me on Kilkenny's main street to lament that three of her four children had emigrated - as have nearly a tenth of Ireland's population since 2008. Many who stay will never repay their personal debts, let alone Ireland's debt for bailing out its failed banks.
中產階級有個習慣，如果到了一個以前從未去過的小城市，發現這個城市很漂亮，他們會在房地產中介的櫥窗前駐足，想像自己在這裏置業。最近，在愛爾蘭南部的基爾根尼(Kilkenny)，我就這麼幹了；不看不知道，一看嚇一跳：這裏的房子真便宜！附近地段一座不錯的房子可能只要不到15萬歐元。房價在2008年金融危機後遭到腰斬，只是愛爾蘭人悲慘遭遇的體現之一。在基爾根尼一條主要街道上，一名婦人拉著我攀談，向我傾訴她的煩惱：4個孩子有3個都移民了。自2008年以來，愛爾蘭近十分之一的人口都做了同樣的選擇。留下來的人中，許多永遠都不可能還清自己的個人債務，更不用說愛爾蘭爲紓困倒閉銀行而欠下的債務了。