At some point in the last decade, Ireland Inc got legs and danced. The economy has put in a spectacular performance, as have the greatest advertisements for Ireland Inc: the numerous touring shows of Riverdance that dance their way around the globe. The irony is that as the world celebrates Ireland as an anachronism, at home Irish identity is changing almost by the day and has nothing to do with dancing maidens - unless they're on E.
We are being told that we've never had it so good and, materially at least, that may be true. The success of the Celtic Tiger means that a people whose ancestors starved in the Great Famine and emigrated on coffin ships are close to joining the rich men's club of Europe. But are the values of this club the ones we really want to embrace?
"We're living in a golden age," says an economist with the ESRI, Chris Whelan. Look back at your parents' lives, he suggests, and ask yourself: are you better off than they were? "Our economic progress in the past decade has been spectacular. Most people would prefer to be living in the society we have now, than 30 years ago," he believes.
Our children don't have to emigrate and by all the standard measurements, we are prospering: we're dining out more, buying more cars, taking more holidays, spending more on our houses and furnishing them more extravagantly than ever before. But other things are on the increase, too, such as drug addiction, violence and suicide. A competitive society like the one we have become breeds isolation and feelings of worthlessness for those who fail in the race for success. Is this the kind of world we want our children to inherit?
"Can people say, our children will be able to afford a house? Will they be less stressed in their jobs? Even if they win the points race and get into white-collar employment, will it be contract employment?" asks Kieran Allen, lecturer in sociology at UCD, editor of the Socialist Worker. His alternative view of the Celtic Tiger is that we have a "discontented majority" who are not benefiting as much as the feelgood hype would have us believe. As the author of papers on class polarisation and the Celtic Tiger, which he has delivered to the Sociological Association of Ireland and the Irish Social Policy Association, his views are being taken seriously.
"While we have a revival of Irish pride, and the image of Ireland having an inferiority complex has disappeared, under the surface there is a sense of growing anxiety; a feeling that the golden age, when booms meant that people could look forward to a better life, is gone.
"Many people feel they are working harder, working longer hours and that realistic aspirations they had to own a house are now slipping from their grasp. The outlet for this anxiety is scapegoating the refugees, as in: `I've been years on the local authority waiting list and I can't get a house, so why is he getting one?'," says Allen.
He argues that the economy has been artificially boosted by US multi-nationals. Meanwhile, the "discontented majority" has agreed to wage restraint through the Programme for Economic and Social Partnership, only to see the wealthy benefit through lower corporate and capital gains taxes and a greater prevalence of lucrative profit-sharing schemes for managers.
"I think that the impression most people have is that the Celtic Tiger is not benefiting the majority of people. We have traffic chaos, primary education is under-resourced, we're being told that we should all be good Europeans and get used to living in apartments. The economy is growing but there has not been a trickledown effect because we operate in a country which has an ideology of social partnership but which disguises how the bulk of the boom is going into the wealthier sections rather than into the discontented majority," Allen believes.
The Celtic Tiger was weaned on drastic cuts in public spending in the late 1980s and the health service has never recovered. And the disadvantaged remain disadvantaged. Despite the boom, the proportion of people with incomes below the poverty line has risen to 34 per cent, compared to 31 per cent a decade ago. "The Celtic Tiger is not raising all boats," says Cork TD Bernard Allen, who sees the increase in private housing estates behind locked gates as a worrying sign. "All of the areas in my own constituency are badly affected by long-term unemployment and by unemployment among young people who don't have the social skills to get reasonable employment in a competitive market. We have social problems like poor housing, drug taking, vandalism and crime and some areas are no-go areas at night-time."
Some urban estates have become so volatile that Cork Corporation - and others - are considering installing CCTV. As communities disintegrate, the Ireland of the squinting windows is being replaced by impersonal, big brother technology. More people are joining the middle, upper-middle and professional classes - yet an entrenched core of poverty remains. Those at highest risk of being poor are living in small villages and towns. In Dublin the risk is concentrated in urban public housing areas where seven out of 10 live in poverty.
It's not surprising, then, that while the percentage of households which could afford to take an annual holiday rose from 32 to 45 per cent between 1987 and 1994, during the same period the rate of household burglar alarm ownership tripled in urban areas and quadrupled in rural areas. We can afford to take holidays - but we don't know what we will return to.
There are those, like Kieran Allen, who fear that a rising tide raises only the yachts. If you cannot afford a yacht, cannot afford a 24-hour security service, cannot afford to give your children an edge by sending them to private nurseries and secondary schools, cannot afford the holidays and the luxury cars, the Celtic Tiger has nothing to offer other than Celtic Pride. If Kieran Allen is right, and the majority is discontented, we need to start asking questions about the source of that discontent.
Part of it may be the loss of community and of connectedness to something greater than we are. Traditional community life is being replaced by bedroom suburbs where the houses remain empty all day while the two-career couples who own them drop their children in creches and schools, then go to the workplace where they put in long hours in order to pay huge mortgages. In the most desirable urban and rural areas, many young families can no longer afford to live where they grew up. For instance, Westport, Co Mayo, has seen the development of so many large holiday home villages for wealthy outsiders, that the urban district council is questioning whether it is time to limit such developments. Soon there will be no one dancing at the crossroads but the ghosts - at least in the off-season.
We're connected to workplace, bank accounts and the Internet - but are we in danger of losing our connectedness to anything else? "We're seeing an increasing number of young workers in the information technology and computer industries who are deeply troubled," says Arlene Colquohoune, a counselling psychologist practising in Dublin. "Young graduates in the computer industry and financial services are cannon fodder, working 100 hours per week, stressed out and drinking to deal with the stress. They work incredibly hard in a very competitive environment and because they work such anti-social hours, they have no time for relationships and friendships.
"Nothing lasts any length of time. If you had a girlfriend you'd have to talk to her in the office on Saturday after a blast in the pub on Friday night. After all that, the salaries aren't great and they can't afford a house," says Colquohoune.
This is not what Irish society has traditionally been about. It has been about people, belonging, community, talk and taking time. The tourists, above all, praise Irish "friendliness" and while we may sneer at it, how will we feel when it's gone?
It would be foolish to romanticise the past; life was never idyllic and without the bleed of emigration among the poor, many communities would have died. Child sex abuse was hidden. Oppressive sexual mores forced unwed mothers to have their babies adopted, homosexuals were persecuted and church hypocrisy went unchallenged. And with the safety of community came limitations.
As one young resident of a cohesive village in west Kerry confided: "Everyone knows your name, everyone knows your business and you know your place."
That can be restrictive, but at the same time we may be too quick to embrace the American way of life where everything is based on status, instead of on the right simply to "be". By turning our backs on the old Ireland, are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
There's a feeling in Ireland that people are "losing their sense of being in touch with themselves and their sense of spirituality because it's all about performance and it's all about money," says Colquohoune. "We are very much joining the rat race with this culture of `let's-do-breakfast' and `do-we-ever-cook-a-meal-at-home-anymore?'
"The Irish have always had a strong sense of place, but for young people in financial services the sense of uniqueness is probably gone. I feel quite strongly that we've lost a sense of what life is about. People are getting cut off from their emotions. They are seduced by the Celtic Tiger and they have to perform and it's possible that you become two-dimensional.
"That's very sad that we could lose the sorts of things we used to value. Instead of going for a walk in the country, you have to be at the right, high-profile barbecue with the right people."
If we become the kind of society which has "right" people and "wrong" people, Ireland may no longer be the kind of place we want to live in at all. Exclusion brings social unrest and mindless violence on a terrifying scale - as the US experience has shown. Now that Ireland Inc has the resources, we have a golden opportunity to make the last country in Europe to industrialise the first country to do it right. We can strengthen communities and community values, keeping what is good while rejecting the oppression of the past. Otherwise, we will have no choice but to surrender our future quality of life to the chaotic play of market forces.
Some may say - as they do in the US - that values can take second place as long as the economy is okay. But when the bubble bursts, what kind of quality of life will we be left with?
