James Franey euronews: “Christine Lagarde, you’re the head of the IMF; You are here in Dublin, Ireland to talk about the lessons we can learn from the Irish bailout. Is Ireland really a model when you consider the social cost of what happened?
Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director: “If I look at the numbers, clearly the Irish recovery is quite extraordinary because when you look at growth …it is up and the highest in the eurozone. if you look at unemployment..it is down by almost 3 percentage points. If you look at debt; it is declining. If you look at deficit, it has been halved almost. So almost all those numbers are really solid and give the direction of a good recovery.
‘Now, there is still over 10 percent unemployment and there is still over 20 percent young people unemployed. So we are not there yet. Although Ireland is off to a good start, it still has work to do to continue that unemployment decline and that job creation. Those will be the key tests to actual and full su
