This is Ireland's first middle class recession - professionals are joining unskilled workers on the dole queues. If anything, it is the Irish middle class who are bearing the brunt of this recession as they are the ones with the most debt - typically geared to both incomes of working couples. Long gone are the days of a middle class comprising working husbands and stay-at-home mums: since 2001 the majority of married women of working age in Ireland have been in paid employment. That was how the middle class fuelled the expansion of the buy-to-let market, aidedand- abetted by our over-leveraged banks.
Stephen Kinsella
Economist at the University of Limerick
List