Born in 2002

Ireland held a second referendum on the Nice Treaty, having rejected it in 2001. This time it passed — Europe was too important to Ireland's prosperity to risk. The euro replaced the punt in physical form, and Irish people adjusted with remarkable ease to the new currency.

The housing market was showing no sign of slowing. A generation of young Irish people was buying property abroad — in Bulgaria, Turkey, Florida — with borrowed money and enormous optimism.