As the legendary investor Warren Buffett said, ‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.’ 

Buffett’s celebrated metaphorical citation offers a humorous mental image of the serious repercussions of careless speculation, one befitting Ireland’s current economic situation with bank bailouts, disappearing billions and severe fiscal crisis..

““Not long ago, comparisons were being made between Iceland and Ireland, the joke being, the only difference between the two was a letter in the name.

In this piece a couple of piebalds eating old Irish punts roam about on a ghost estate made out of Icelandic krona. Set against the backdrop of a sky made out of German marks, the work draws comparisons to our economic situation and Iceland's bankrupt state.

Both Iceland and Ireland underwent spectacular economic growth dependent on inflated financial and construction sectors. We now have more than 2800 ghosts estates in Ireland and some 23000 unoccupied houses. One in every five houses in Ireland is now unoccupied.

The issue of ghost estates in Ireland is more than empty houses. It's a symbol of the country's descent from the Celtic Tiger leading the European charge of prosperity to a broken state, crippled by what most would agree was a universal greed: greed of consumers, developers and those who Irish people blame the most, the banks.”