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Gerard McCann
By the time of the Great Depression in October 1929 the economy of the Irish Free State, Saorstát Éireann, was still suffering fallout from the war of independence, a civil war and the partition of the country, which had dismembered the industrial north-east from the rest of the country. Partition had left the island divided not only politically, but two distinct economic systems had been carved out, with one region agriculturally dominant, the other industrially dependent.
The movement for independence in the Free State had been driven by the farming communities across the south and with the creation of a twenty-six county economic policy framework there emerged a systemic bias towards this rural base. The result was a southern administration that had taken on the burden of rebuilding an economy that had been emasculated from its industrial hub, wasted by the war, and given the liability of transition through the Anglo-Irish Treaty (6 December 1921). By the mid-1920s the architecture of the southern Irish economy was such that protectionism had already been silting up economic development, while the internal market had remained frustrated by prolonged stagnation. It meant that the economy of Saorstát Éireann was affected to a lesser extent during the depression than many other regions of Europe – including the designated ‘dominion’ of Northern Ireland that had been more integrated into the global market.the extent to which the Irish economy was affected by the Great Depression and how the respective Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil governments managed this period in Irish economic history. It will also connect this to partition itself, ideological bias, the depression in the north and how both governments struggled to address the implications of global economic meltdown
