The collapse of the Irish economy during the Global Financial Crisis brought a substantial decline in gross domestic product, a trebling of the unemployment rate and a sharp increase in public debt. Key to the scale of Ireland's crisis was the scale of a domestic property bubble. In the Corden Lecture, I explored how Ireland's notable turnaround since 2013 contrasts with the experiences of Spain, Portugal and Greece. This was primarily due to Ireland's large, foreign‐owned, modern, export‐oriented, multinational sector and its early and sustained action to deal with the fiscal deficit that emerged in 2008.