CFE is one of the best reasons to love Ireland

CFE comes in at no 24 in the Irish Times guide to the "reasons to love Ireland"

The Irish Times asked some of its top contributors for reasons to be cheerful.  As they put it "We racked our brains for reasons why – despite the rain, recession and repression – we remain proud of our country. And here they are."


CFE came in at no 24 thanks to Fintan O Toole.  Deputy editor of the Irish Times and an author Fintan came to speak at an open meeting of our book club last November.  The discussion was about his book Ship of Fools, and met members of the exchange.  Here is his entry in the 50 best reasons article.




"24. Because we can share. There might be a lot wrong with Irish culture, but it has always had a sense of community and of the value of co-operation. Much of that may have been lost in the deluded boomtimes, but there’s an opportunity to recover it. The Clonakilty Favour Exchange is a brilliantly simple idea. People use a website to offer favours to neighbours – help with digging a garden, music lessons for a child, a lift to Dublin – for which they gain credits. These credits are then banked and can be used to pay for favours in return. It’s a lovely way of using contemporary technology to return to and to revive an older sense of co-operation. And it shows that there really is more to life than money".

– FINTAN O’TOOLE

Read the whole article in the Irish Times here














 More about Ship of Fools here

 Fintan O'Toole "Ship of Fools"

For twenty years, Ireland's economic miracle was supposed to be the envy of the world. Low taxes, light regulation and an 'anything goes' attitude seemed to have created boundless prosperity. And then, as in Iceland, the glittering palaces vanished in the heat of the global financial meltdown. For years, those with economic power had been investing in a gigantic property bubble.
In Ship of Fools Fintan O'Toole tells the story of this dizzying rise and sickening fall. Ireland may have had a tiger economy, but those in charge of it had not lost their taste for sweetheart deals, back-handers and bribery. This is the essential analysis of Ireland's economic suicide.