After the Party the Hangover?: An Analysis of ‘Post-Celtic Tiger’ Ireland in the Light of the February 2011 elections’

The election of February 2011 was dominated by the International Monetary Fund/European Central Bank bailout of November 2010, the state of the public finances, the ongoing Irish banking crisis, and the disastrous state of the economy with rising unemployment, emigration and collapsing international competiveness. After years of phenomenal economic growth (at least as measured by orthodox economic measurements such as gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment), known as the 'Celtic Tiger‘, during which a bloated construction industry accounted for a quarter of GDP and Irish banks sank nearly a third of their lending in construction projects, Ireland has entered a 'post-Celtic Tiger‘ era. This article offers a critical analysis outlining some political, economic and cultural issues of this election as heralding a decisive stage in the 'post-Celtic Tiger' development of the Republic of Ireland, and suggests that what is required at this present historical moment is that a different development model be articulated by the Irish state and wider society.

Third harmonic order imaging as a focal spot diagnostic for high intensity laser-solid interactions

As the state of the art for high power laser systems increases from terawatt to petawatt level and beyond, a crucial parameter for routinely monitoring high intensity performance is laser spot size on a solid target during an intense interaction in the tight focus regime ( 10(19) Wcm(-2) is demonstrated experimentally and shown to provide the basis for an effective focus diagnostic. Importantly, this technique is also shown to allow in-situ diagnosis of focal spot quality achieved after reflection from a double plasma mirror setup for very intense high contrast interactions (> 10(20) Wcm(-2)) an important application for the field of high laser contrast interaction science.