The Republic of Ireland isn’t having a very good run these days. Way back in September of 2008, back when everybody else was just speculating about recessions, the small country was forced to announce that it was already in one. Though technically the U.S. beat it by practically a year, it was under such circumstances that nothing official was announced until the beginning of December 2008.

Everybody is feeling their own personal economic woes compounded by everybody else’s troubles, but some of us in the global community are doing worse than others. And unfortunately for them, Ireland is undoubtedly lumped in with that lot.

Here in the U.S., we just learned that our economy shrank by a total of 6.3% last quarter. Ireland one-upped us though with a 7.5% economic setback.

That smarts especially for a country once known as the Celtic Tiger thanks to strong growth back a decade or two ago. And just to add insult on top of injury, the declines were much worse than anybody expected, so analysts now expect even worse for the year ahead.

“We are of the view that GDP is set to decline in the order of 6.5% for the current year… given the extent of the downward momentum at the turn of the year as evidenced by today’s data,” Deirdre Ryan, an economist at Goodybody Stockbrokers in Dublin, was quoted as saying.