As an Irish man, it makes me kind of proud that we have pulled ourself out of the mess enough to be rarely mentioned in such lists any more! We have a lot of problems, including a stupid housing market once again, high debts and exposure because of our export dependance - but i would sure rather be in our position than Greece's.
And it proves Krugman wrong so I guess since that 2 year old article with its disingenuous graph (sneakily shifting the y-axis to make the up tick look insignificant), he'll never mention Ireland again.
Irish GDP grew 4.8% last year - one of the highest in the EU. Unemployment is 30/40% less than peak (although still high at 9.5% but it's falling). The government deficit is falling faster than expected. So despite the fact that apparently "austerity doesn't work", it did for Ireland (and it looks like it's starting to work for Spain and maybe even Portugal and Italy).