Bomb Found in Ireland Hours Before Queen Arrives

The bus was traveling from Ballina in the west of Ireland toward Dublin and the device was found in Maynooth, 40 miles from Dublin. About 30 passengers had left the bus when it was stopped and searched, apparently after a tip by an informant, the police said.

News agencies reported that the Irish police also found a sham device, harmless but meant to appear to be a bomb, at a tram station in North Dublin. And a bomb threat that was received in London was regarded as credible by the police.

Despite the alarms, the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, flew into a military airfield outside Dublin, shrouded by one of the biggest security operations in recent years, both for the monarch and for President Obama, who is scheduled to visit the country early next week. The combined security effort is estimated to cost as much as $42.4 million, a large sum for a country in a deep economic slump.

The queen’s four-day visit, heavy with symbolism, is meant to finally signal reconciliation between Britain and a country that fought a bitter independence war against the British throne early in the 20th century. No reigning monarch had visited the island since the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922; the queen’s grandfather, King George V, was the last British monarch to visit, in 1911, when Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom.

The queen is to lay a wreath later Tuesday at a garden of remembrance, honoring those who fought against her forebears. She is also to visit the Croke Park stadium where British forces fired into a crowd during Ireland’s independence war and killed 14 people.

The Irish President, Mary McAleese, told the state broadcaster that the queen’s visit was “an extraordinary moment in Irish history,” while David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, said there was “a great sense of history and occasion” to the visit. But the symbolism was also offset by questions of security.

Planned routes for the queen to travel while in Dublin have been cleared for days of parked cars, and access to some areas has been blocked. More than 5,000 manholes, culverts and drains have been checked and sealed. Even the Dublin Zoo, which is close to where the queen will be staying, will be closed for two days.

Police north and south of the Irish border have arrested dissident republicans, detaining some of them, and surveillance is high. Citizens are being subjected to random searches around Dublin and elsewhere.

The measures reflect worries that dissident republicans who are opposed to both the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland and to the very presence of a British monarch on the island will mount some kind of attack. Weeks before the monarch’s visit, dissident republicans in Northern Ireland appeared armed and with their faces masked in a cemetery in Northern Ireland to warn Elizabeth that she was not welcome.

On Monday, the British police said that they had received a credible bomb threat in central London on the eve of the queen’s journey.

In a statement, a spokesman for Scotland Yard said on Monday that “a bomb threat warning has been received” but that it was “not specific in relation to location or time.”

Some areas of London were cordoned off, but no device was found, leading police to assume that the coded message was a hoax meant to complicate Elizabeth’s plans.

Central points around Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace were cordoned off as the police investigated the threat, and a suitcase left outside a hotel was destroyed by the police on Monday morning. Parts of the Mall were also shut down.

Police officials urged Londoners to be vigilant, but the threat designation for Irish-related terrorism had not been increased.

While the source of the threat remained unclear, suspicion immediately fell on dissident Irish republicans who have opposed the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. The government includes the mainly Protestant unionists, who seek to keep the province a permanent part of Britain, and the mainly Catholic republicans, who want a united Ireland.

Opinion surveys suggest that many Irish people do not object to the monarch’s visit, but a minority remains opposed, accusing Britain of occupying Northern Ireland to thwart aspirations for a single Ireland.

Douglas Dalby contributed reporting from Dublin.

 

After Bust in Ireland, Ordinary People Make Do With Less

“We were on the up and up,” Mr. Condra said.

The Condras are among hundreds of thousands of Irish who, over the last few years, finally started to catch up with and even surpass many of their European neighbors. But now, after a stunning plunge fueled by a disastrous banking collapse, the economy has fallen back to where it was in 2005, before a housing bubble stoked a growth frenzy.

“The last several years of growth in Ireland have effectively been wiped out,” said Constantin Gurdgiev, an economist and lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin.

For many people in Ireland, it is as if the boom never happened. And some of those who floated up during the good times now see themselves slipping even further behind.

“It’s like we drew the lottery ticket made in hell,” said Mr. Condra, who says he gets by with only two pairs of shoes, one for work, so that he can afford to meet the needs of his growing children. “Suddenly we see that the Europe we’ve bought into isn’t a golden utopia.”

Benefiting from years of low interest rates that followed the creation of the euro zone in 1999, Ireland enjoyed one of the biggest growth spurts of any country in Europe, and spent lavishly as its wealth increased. The economy expanded an average of 7 percent in the decade leading up to 2007 before plunging into a deep recession. Per person, inflation-adjusted economic activity has fallen approximately 18 percent from the peak, when the average gross domestic product per person was a shade over 43,000 euros ($62,000). Now it is less than 35,000 euros ($50, 767).

As the country tries to recover from the bust, many of its people are paying a tremendous cost for the folly of the country’s banks and to bring its government finances back in order.

As part of Ireland’s effort to pay down its immense debts and bail out the banks, the Condras’ salaries from their state jobs as hospital workers have been cut 20 percent in two years. Higher taxes and further spending cuts are on the horizon.

Moreover, the European Central Bank, for the first time in three years, is raising interest rates, which will increase borrowing costs on existing home loans. That frightens the Condras even more.

“Now we’re terrified that we won’t be able to pay our mortgage, and could move into social housing,” Mr. Condra said.

Even people with good incomes who have not been hit as hard as the Condras are convinced that Ireland is facing years, perhaps a full generation, of economic struggle.

With unemployment at 14.7 percent, thousands of young Irish people continue to leave the country to find work. Those who have good, secure jobs here are thankful, but even they worry about the future and are rationing spending. Household savings surged to 11 billion euros in 2009 from 3.5 billion euros in 2008, and net disposable income fell.

There are glimpses of renewal. Exports from multinational companies like Intel, Pfizer and smaller manufacturers are surging as wages become more competitive and help to lower production costs, giving hope for future growth.

Signs of a real estate recovery have even emerged, with buyers flocking to recent auctions to snap up distressed properties.

Patsy Carney’s generic pharmaceuticals export business, EirGen Pharma, has been thriving. He has hung on to the 40 employees at his plant in Waterford and hopes to hire 60 more people.

Nevertheless, he recognizes what the collapse has meant for the Irish as a whole. “You see it all around you, all the people out of work, and there’s nothing turning up,” he said. “It’s frightening.”

In Ireland, treatments at suicide prevention centers increased by a third last year, with sudden financial troubles cited most often as the cause of despair. “It’s the psychological impact of austerity that bites the hardest and lasts the longest,” Mr. Condra said.

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