Squeezed Irish Begged to Buy Fridges as Economy Needs Lift

Bloomberg, 8 July, 2011

Tara O’Neill stands empty-handed and defiant outside a Marks & Spencer store on Dublin’s busiest shopping street. She won’t be tempted to buy anything.

“I’ve gotten rid of my credit cards and paid down my overdraft,” said O’Neill, 36, whose construction worker husband is in London after Ireland’s real-estate bubble collapsed. “Now we’re in recession. I don’t buy what I don’t have to.”

Irish retail sales are falling at more than twice the pace of the average in the euro region, after the government increased taxes and reduced salaries for state workers by 14 percent to help cope with Europe’s worst banking crisis. Consumer spending plunged 1.9 percent in the first quarter from the fourth quarter, the steepest drop in two years, according to figures published last month by the statistics office.

For rest of article go here.