Many commentators at home and abroad have remarked how passively the Irish have taken the austerity heaped upon them.
Why should anyone be surprised?
It took nearly 700 years of oppression for us to cast of the imperial British yoke. We suffered religious and cultural persecution, dispossession and multiple famines. And in all that time how did we react? In the usual Irish way. A few pikemen killing their neighbours, a couple of drunken riots, a skirmish in a cabbage patch and an on again off again bank holiday disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_uprisings
And how did the majority of Irish people react? They directed their anger at their fellow Irish men and women. The rebels of 1916 were pelted with stones and spat at on their way to Kilmainham.
So lying down and taking it seems to be the Irish way and anybody who points out the injustice of our situation is dismissed as a whinger.