Dublin docklands - A parable for a broken country

IF EVER one of our more astute impresarios, Noel Pearson say, was to base a musical on the incredible rise and tragic collapse of the Celtic Tiger then Docklands The Musical would be as good a theme and title as any.

The script could be peppered with secrets, conflicts of interest, greed, collusion and a complete failure of reason or constraint. It might detail an epidemic of blind ambition that bordered on insanity. It could be a kind of an Irish On the Waterfront set to music but with a slightly different perspective on corruption.

Rather than a story of exploited dock workers taking on the mob and brutal employers we could have developers, bankers, board members (often the same people so casting might not be as expensive as you might imagine) civil servants and, the usual stooge at the end picking up the tab, the taxpayers of this exploited Republic.