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Ireland hardly comes to mind when discussing economic powerhouses. The country has long had a reputation as one of Western Europe’s poorest nations, with a third of the population living below the poverty line as recently as the 1980s.

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The Emerald Island’s modest population of 4.5 million people and its relatively middle-of-the-road gross domestic product of US$238 billion (No. 43 in the world, placing it between Venezuela and Finland) are also reasons why the country usually flies under the radar for many people.

But the country’s recent eye-popping economic growth is making it a lot harder to ignore. The Irish economy grew 7.8 per cent in 2015, placing it well ahead of even emerging giants such as China and India. More telling is that Ireland is pulling off a quiet economic miracle as most of the rest of Europe’s economies struggle with poor credit growth, high unemployment and weak inflation.

It is a surprising turn of events for a country that only a few years ago was so financially distressed that investors were demanding the Irish government pay them a 14-per-cent return on the 10-year bond. That kind of sky-high yield lumped the Emerald Isle with Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain to form the so-called PIIGS — a collection of countries that had painfully low economic growth, high unemployment and ballooning debt-to-GDP ratios that put them at risk of default