Ireland has been much in the news in the UK and US and worldwide but for all the wrong reasons.

Now that a new government will be formed likely by the end of February the scale of the task they face can be gauged by what the most influential media writers are saying.

Here are some examples:

Daily Telegraph UK

100,000 to flee Ireland

 “As many as 100,000 people will abandon Ireland by April 2012, according to the state-funded Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). The republic is set to witness emigration on a larger scale than in the 1980s, ESRI said, as people vote with their feet to escape high unemployment, rising taxes and growing unrest over Dublin's austerity cuts.”
 
CNN USA

Ireland’s crumbling government

“The Green Party has pulled out of Ireland's crumbling government, depriving it of a majority in parliament and likely forcing early elections.

The decision on Sunday comes a day after Prime Minister Brian Cowen announced he would not lead his Fianna Fail party after elections, sparking a race to succeed him.”
 
Paul Krugmann - New York Times

Ireland Poster Boy for Zombie Economics

Ireland is the poster boy for Zombie economics, says Paul Krugman The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner in economics.

“Zombie economics he says is "the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything — yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever."

The Economist

Epic Fail

“The Fianna Fail party’s two biggest failings in government have been the mismanagement of a property-induced economic boom followed by an underestimate of the scale of the bust and the losses incurred by Ireland’s banks.
 
CBS News

Celtic Tiger now a basket case

“The potato famine caused the first wave of mass emigration in the 1840s.

This time, a disastrous banking failure and a giant real estate bubble that burst have left Ireland with an economy on life support and crippling unemployment lines.

Ireland the Celtic tiger is now Europe's basket case.”

"It's really bad. The country is on its knees. People are sick of the governments, sick of the banks," said one woman.
 
Wall Street Journal

Shambolic end

Even by recent standards, it has been a shambolic end to one of the most ignominious political chapters in Ireland’s recent history. And it’s not over yet.

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen ran out of goodwill with members of his own party and resigned as leader of his governing Fianna Fail party on Saturday.