Officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are normally escorted under armed guard to meetings in the Greek finance ministry, such is the public hostility towards them.
At a meeting there last November, several senior figures from the Washington-based fund were forced to flee through a back door after anti-austerity protesters threatened to storm the building.
At one point, Greece’s main policing union even threatened to have troika officials arrested, accusing them of blackmail and “covertly abolishing democracy and national sovereignty”.
Contrast this with the experience of Peter Breuer, the IMF's departing representative in Ireland, who worked from an office inside the Central Bank's HQ on Dame Street and travelled to meetings on a bicycle. To contact him, or his team during the past three years, all one had to do was phone the main switch at the Central Bank and ask for the IMF.
It’s unlikely his counterpart in Athens enjoys the same freedoms or operates a similar open-door policy.
Forty-five-year-old Breuer, who is in the process of moving back to Washington after a three-and-half-year stint in Ireland, seems genuinely sad to be leaving.
“I personally felt very welcome in this community in both, a professional and a personal sense. This is what has made this experience so special and what I will miss the most,” he told me.
Back in 2011, however, he admits to being a little uneasy about the Irish posting, not least because of his German nationality.
“Before arriving, I was a bit apprehensive because I happened to be a national of a country that commanded a lot of attention in the European crisis and represented one of the troika institutions. In reality, this was never an issue.”
He adds that he was able to “make many friends among my interlocutors, the parent community, neighbours, and others. People opened up about their problems, which gave me a real sense of the human side of the crisis.”
Polished communicator
Breuer is a polished communicator and well-schooled in avoiding off-the-cuff remarks that might be misinterpreted, as one might expect given the sensitive nature of his job. When it comes to outlining his impressions of the Irish, he errs on the side of praise – responding in kind to questions submitted by email.
“Working at an international institution with a diverse staff from around the world makes you realise every day that it is difficult to generalise by nationality. Yet, there are some traits that you come to recognise quite soon in Ireland.
“I learned a lot from the ability of many Irish to understand another person’s situation and to take it into account in their own actions. This empathy is a key ingredient in the glue that holds the community together. Their sincere care for others and their magnanimity has helped the Irish, I believe, to be more influential in the world community – punching above their weight so to speak – than simple statistical indicators would suggest.”
Breuer does, however, point to a reticence when it comes to challenging authority.
“Some of the earlier reports analysing the causes of the crisis in Ireland suggest that ‘group think’ and a reluctance to challenge others contributed to the bubble growing larger and thus causing more damage when it burst.
“I wasn’t here at that time so would not claim to understand fully, but perhaps there is some natural tension between the empathy and friendliness among people that make being here so pleasant and the need at times to question and confront those with whom we have close working relationships.”
This is the nearest he comes to pinpointing a national flaw.
Having an operative permanently on the ground in a programme country – as opposed to a team coming in on a quarterly basis to look at the books – represents something of a new departure for the IMF.
“One of the main reasons for stationing someone in the field is to gather a deeper understanding of the authorities’ thinking about economic developments and policy options.”
While Breuer’s exact brief remains something of a mystery, he was undoubtedly updating his superiors in Washington on the political temperature here.
“The political environment is very important to understanding the space within which economic policy making takes place.”
In May, the IMF made something of faux pas by noting in an update on Ireland that Joan Burton was almost certain to be the next Labour leader in advance of the leadership vote – something that angered the other candidate, Alex White.
Breuer believes the IMF has learned from its mistakes in other countries and that giving Ireland “ownership” of the policies has been key to the “success of the programme” here.
“As an institution, the IMF aims to learn from our experiences and reflect on them in our diagnosis of economic challenges in member countries. There is no ‘cookie cutter’ approach as policy recommendations need to be tailored to the particular circumstances, while being globally consistent.”
Unsurprisingly, he says the working relationship between the Irish authorities and the IMF has been and continues to be excellent.
“There was agreement on the diagnosis of the problem and the objectives of the healing process from early on.”
However, he admits there have been many “robust debates” along the way.
Despite the overhanging legacy of private and public debt, Breuer is confident about the outlook for the country.
“When I arrived three years ago, people were saying that the programme wasn’t working. For example, the Government’s cost of borrowing was above 14 per cent. It is now 2.5 per cent – nobody thought that this would happen.
“Surely, crisis fighting at the European level made a considerable difference, but Ireland also managed to differentiate itself by consistent policy implementation, which was difficult especially when the euro crisis undermined confidence and delayed the recovery.”
That said, he acknowledges that many people have not yet seen the change in growth prospects translate into changes in their daily lives.
Impressions of Ireland
Breuer is something of a career bureaucrat having worked on IMF teams in Argentina, Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
How does he think Ireland compares with other countries?
“My impression is that there is an astonishing degree of self-awareness. The Irish resisted the temptation to blame others for the bubble and the banking crisis, while maintaining a healthy interest in specific issues where the costs may have been exacerbated by decisions made elsewhere.
“Without understating the severe impact of the crisis on many people, there is a sense among the Irish that they have experienced other crises before and that they will get through this one, as well. This mix of optimism and perseverance is inspiring.”
The fund plans to carry out an evaluation of its Irish program in the coming month, aimed at drawing lessons from the experience.
During his stay in Ireland, Breuer lived with his wife and two children in Ballsbridge.
“We loved Dublin’s walkability and running into someone we know quite frequently. We lived in walking distance to the kids’ school but soon experienced some effects of the crisis.”
Without going into detail, he explains that a “complicated web of financial mishaps” resulted in the school having to move away from them. “We put up with a longer commute as the school is excellent,” he says.
Breuer says he travelled extensively throughout the country during his time here and that his favourite places were the “craggy cliffs in West Cork” and Silver Strand beach in Donegal.
He also appears to have been charmed by Dublin’s pub culture.
“I realise that many people point to drinking in Ireland as an issue. But I think there is a lot to be said for the therapeutic value of having a pint with a group of friends or colleagues. The exchange of seemingly tangential and implicit information in an informal setting helps to find reassurance about the support of society for the individual. One gains a lot of perspective from seeing how things look from the other side of a pint,” he says.
