Wrong policy choices and inaction by Irish Governments led to lost decades in the 1950s, and in the 1980s, and policy failures during the boom years of this decade are ensuring that the coming recession will be deeper and longer in Ireland than elsewhere. ‘To have endured three periods of chronic economic underperformance in half a century as a result of policy mistakes must make it abundantly clear to all thinking people who care about the future of the country that the 1937 political framework is no longer fit for purpose’, writes Dan O’Brien, Ireland editor of the Economist Intelligence Unit in this extract from his forthcoming book, ‘Ireland, Europe and the World: Writings on a new Century’, to be published in the Autumn by Gill & Macmillan