PIIGS = Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain. The governments done in with debt as are private households and once again everyone's leaving Ireland to find work. Just because they are ideologically appealing to you with low taxes and crap services doesn't mean they are actually healthy. As a household debt to disposable income ratio of 190% would show.
Should have read "rest of the PIIGS"
The key difference between Ireland and the rest is that their debt ratio exploded as a result of a stupid decision to bail out their banks with the national treasury, not because of long term structural deficits.
In one case, you wipe out the one-off debts and there's no gap between taxes and expenditures to worry about. In the other case the gap between taxes and expenditures opens up again immediately after the old debt is wiped out, and keeps growing indefinitely.
The solution is simple Jay: tax the richest 500 Greeks fairly!
quod erat demonstrandum