Looking out onto Grafton Street, home to Dublin's department stores, one could mistakenly think it was business as usual but for a shop sign that reads: "Never mind the recession, see our prices." This is not Greece. There are no riots. But a quick glance at the editorials of the broadsheets reveals that this is a nation irate at its elite.

"We're not a rioty people," Brian Lucey, a former economist at the central bank who is now a professor at Trinity College Dublin, says. "But there's a great