The PIIGS are possibly more reliant on road transport than average, something stemming from geographic location, inappropriate Urban Planning or both.

Or a historic lack of capital to invest in railways when they were fashionable. All those states invested in infrastructure when railways were silly socialism.

Ireland has a crappy railway infrastructure and really great social attitudes to use of public transport: Sam's colleagues in her more status conscious job used to be somewhat horrified that she commuted by rail rather than driving. We've upgraded the existing infrastructure,  but built relatively little - a light transit system in Dublin. There was far more rail fifty years or so ago.

Also, Irish electrical generation is quite dependent on oil, last I looked.

Although Ireland is similar to other PIIGS countries in having serious financial problems, it is quite different in the sense that - despite everything - we are a net exporter and expect exports to continue to grow rapidly in the next few years.  Our industrial/ post industrial base was very significantly modernised in the Tiger years so that we have most of the worlds leading IT and pharmaceutical companies locating significant operations here.  The relatively high tech and advanced nature of these facilities has allowed them to remain competitive despite our cost base getting out of line more generally.

The reliance on Oil/gas for electricity is partly due to the gas finds off our coast but there is a national target to go 30& renewables by 2020 which seems to be being met ahead of schedule.  Our relatively sparse population density doesn't lend itself to rail although it is regrettable we actually reduced rail freight in recent years.  Undoubtedly high Oil prices have a disproportionate effect on countries like Ireland because of our high Oil/gas and road dependency.  However this effect is dwarfed by the scale of the problems created by our banking sector induced property bubble.

notes from no w here

The fact that the PIIGS are most dependent on oil imports among EU nations is interesting. I went back and looked at my old diary Where will Peak Oil hurt the most? by Migeru (May 27th, 2008) to see where the PIIGS featured in that discussion and I found the following:

We see one country from the Horn of Africa, a number of countries from the EU15 (Italy and Germany are not far below that dotted line), the USA, and again Belarus and Tayikistan.

This means that the only PIIGS country that didn't appear among the most vulnerable was Portugal.

Looking at currency reserves was not the right thing to do, as was discussed in that diary's comments and further clarified here. But still, it is interesting that the PIIGS did show up among the most vulnerable countries in my exploratory analysis.

The brainless should not be in banking -- Willem Buiter

To reinforce my earlier point that, unlike the other PIIGS, Ireland has a relatively healthy industrial/exports sector - though a narrowly based one.

Industrial production rises 13.7% in February - The Irish Times - Fri, Apr 09, 2010

Annual industrial production rose 13.7 per cent in February compared to the same month in 2009, the Central Statistics Office said today.

Turnover was 3.6 per cent lower compared with February 2009.

The rise in volume was driven by growth in the production of basic pharmaceutical products and preparations, which rose 33.4 per cent. This was offset by a 32.3 per cent decline in the production of computer, electronic and optical products.

The "modern" sector, which includes high-technology and chemical sectors, gained 18.5 per cent for the month, while the traditional sector rose marginally at 0.5 per cent.

Seasonally adjusted figures show the volume of industrial production for the three-month period to the end of February 2010 was 5.7 per cent higher than the preeceeding quarter.

Turnover in the same period was up 4.3 per cent for manufacturing industries.

"In overall terms, the figures for 2009 weren't too bad all things considered, even though it was the `multi-national' sector that was once again the main output driver. However, given the positive start to 2010, there is every chance that we will see a healthy average increase in manufacturing output this year," said Bloxham's chief economist Alan McQuaid.

"The industrial output data are consistent with Ireland's external trade figures, as they clearly show a performance which is better than the global average, but in effect completely driven by a healthy chemicals sector, which can be quite volatile at the best of times. Chemicals account for over 50 per cent of Ireland's merchandise exports, and the fact that the products produced in this industry tend to be less cyclical than other sectors is a huge plus in times of recession."

notes from no w here

Seems to me that terrain and geography matters a lot.

I've driven a lot in Greece, Italy and Spain. Italy and Spain are big countries with very diversified terrain. I once spent 36 hours on a train from Padova to Sicily (and yes, it broke down a number of times, but was not stopped for more than an hour at any given time). Greece is pretty mountainous and Spain is just big.

European Tribune - Comments - What makes them PIIGS?

Without having hard numbers, this reliance on Oil is mainly due to the Transport sector, given that all the PIIGS have been modernizing their Electricity infrastructure and consolidating balanced energy mixes there.

How about heating? Before the 70ies oil crises Sweden had lots of oil heating. Sweden of course has large heating needs, though countries with lots of heat tends to have poor insulation making their heating needs larger when it is cold.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

This relation seems to be interesting as a correlation, probably signaling a general lack of planning, but I don't see why one should lead to the other.

If anything there should be a relation between the country's external debt and the energy mix. The PIIGS are PIIGS because of their state budget deficit.. and it is not the state that consumes the oil. Moreover, Spain had a budget surplus in the last years, today's deficit is simply conjectural - a the oil-dependence is not.