ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Celtic Tiger

The Celtic Tiger is a term used to describe the rapid economic growth experienced by Ireland between the years 1995 and 2007.

It was like when you were playing your favorite video game and you went from having a really weak character to having a super powerful one really quickly.

In Ireland, a lot of changes happened all at once, like more big businesses moving in and more people getting jobs. This helped the country make more money and things got better for a lot of people.

People started to feel more confident about the future, and they spent more money which helped even more businesses grow. It was like a big snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger.

But then, just like in your video game, things started to slow down and some of the businesses couldn't keep up. The snowball stopped growing and started to shrink, and people started to lose their jobs again.

So even though the Celtic Tiger was really great while it lasted, it showed us that we need to be careful to make sure we're not relying on just one thing to make everything better. We need to make sure that we build things up step by step so that they stay strong for a long time.