'All Pain, No Gain': The Irish Backlash to Europe's Austerity Plans
<div class='node-body'><p>In the small town of Clones, near the Northern Ireland border, an unique experiment is underway that uses a little known loophole to help a local economy ease the pain from a ravaged national economy.</p>
<p>The loophole, explains <em>The Guardian</em>'s Henry McDonald, "deems that up to 285m punts [the older Irish currency] stuffed under Irish mattresses, inside piggy banks, salted away as souvenirs in shoeboxes or in latent bank accounts, are still legal currency."</p></div><div class="field field-type-filefield field-field-news-hp-image">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item odd">
<img src="http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imagecache/news_archive_thumbnail/article_images/ireland_sm.jpg" alt="[field_image_caption-raw]" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-news_archive_thumbnail imagecache-default imagecache-news_archive_thumbnail_default" /> </div>
</div>
</div>
<p><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/27-2" target="_blank">read more</a></p>
Email this page
Printer-friendly version