Few countries feel so similar as New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland.
We are both island nations with much larger neighbours. Each of us has a population of about 5 million. We were both colonised by Britain. Consequently, English is our shared language, with only a per cent or two speaking the country’s first language natively. We lead the world in pasture farming.
And this year, we seem destined to meet in the knockout stage of the rugby world cup in France.
But, until the early 1990s, Ireland and New Zealand shared another less attractive characteristic. Both countries languished in the bottom half of the OECD’s GDP-per-capita league table.
