Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Cultural Studies: From Crisis to Celtic Tiger: Ireland at the End of the 20th century, language: English, abstract: This term paper will discuss and evaluate the reasons and consequences of Ireland's extraordinarily high unemployment rate in the 80's. (However, to analyze a period of time in a country's history, one can not just take it out of its historical contexts.) To evaluate Ireland's labour market situation in the 80's one has to take a look at incidents that occurred and decisions that were made way back into Ireland's history (especially focusing on its unemployment problem in the 80's.) A lot of the reforms and changes initially made in Ireland to improve its economic performance thus creating employment were later to be seen to have had the opposite effect. (Therefore) a brief summary of events highlighting some of these decisions (is) illustrated below.