By Tanya Sweeney

Copyright independent

Just as Adam Maguire prepares to release his first book, The Bailout Babies, the very generation he is writing about appear to have been bestowed with their first major anthem. CMAT’s Euro-Country reflects on the 2008 financial crash, from a child’s perspective, and features the lyrics All the big boys/All the Berties/All the envelopes/Yeah, they hurt me/I was 12 when the das started killing themselves all around me. The song appears to have hit a major nerve with Ireland’s millennials, most of whom are experiencing major frustrations as a result of Ireland’s economic and housing situation.

In writing his book about those who were children at the time of the Celtic Tiger crash, Maguire – a business journalist for RTÉ – interviewed a number of young people about the realities of their lives. Much as the name of his book suggests, the ‘bailout babies’ are those who were children during the final days of the Celtic Tiger, and around the time of the International Monetary Fund bailout, agreed alongside the European Central Bank and European Commission to the tune of €85bn in late 2010.