12 Jul 2015

Antoin Murphy - Irish bank closures

From Sunday Morning, 7:20 am on 12 July 2015

When the banks ran dry and the pubs provided the liquidity.

Irish pub Photo CC BY William Murphy Flickr

Prof Antoin Murphy suppliedWith the banks in Greece having been closed for over a week, people are beginning to ask what happens when the banks stay closed not for days or weeks but for months.

Well in Ireland when the bankers went on strike in the 1960s and 70s and the cash ran dry it was the pubs that provided the liquidity.

Antoin Murphy, professor emiritus of economics at Trinity College, Dublin, is the author of one of the few academic studies of the impact of the bankers strikes and as he tells Sunday Morning producer Jeremy Rose he believes the Irish bank strikes may provide some lessons for Greece.