Arrival of the ’bogeyman’

It was never envisaged the IMF would be needed to bail out a developed economy like Ireland’s. Michael Clifford reports on how its role has changed

BACK in the 1980s, the three letters spelled ‘bogeyman’. When the country languished in recession, there was one depth which had not yet been plumbed. If things got any worse, if the country didn’t get up off its knees, it might actually be time to call in, whisper it, the IMF.

It was in those tones that the International Monetary Fund was spoken. By the 1980s, only tin pot dictatorships, or famine-struck African countries had recourse to the fund, as it is known. In the depths of the UK’s winters of discontent in the 1970s, there had been a brief flirtation with the fund, but that was regarded as little more than an aberration.