Despite material success Irish people still see consumerism as a dirty word. New findings reveal that we highly value wealth, but are afraid to say so, writes Shane Hegarty
We may be more familiar with wealth than ever before, but we're not yet comfortable with it. We are happy to earn money, but almost penitent when spending it. In modern Ireland, it appears that we find it more difficult to talk honestly about money than about sex, or that the sense of denial and of guilt has moved from the bedroom to the wallet.
The results of the Money Nation report offer further evidence of our deeply contradictory attitudes to wealth. The survey of 1,181 Irish people over the age of 15 suggests that while we don't accept that money can buy happiness, we now value property over children; that we scorn materialism, yet see possessions and money as symbols of success.
Its headline findings reveal that Irish adults believe a family needs a lot of money to be wealthy, but would have to be earning very little before it should be considered poor. When asked at what level of pre-tax annual income a family of two adults and two children needs before it can be considered wealthy, the average response was €145,000. (Dubliners, unsurprisingly, added almost €15,000 to that.) According to the Central Statistics Office the average industrial wage is €30,000. It is just under €39,000 for financial staff and €43,500 for public servants. Given the current gripes about rip-off prices, childcare costs, personal debt, property prices and the overall cost of living, it should be no great surprise that the figure is so high.
Which is why it is a shock that, despite all these gripes, we believe that that same family would need to be earning less than €17,700 before it could be considered poor. In fact, 29 per cent said that €10,000 was the level under which a family would become poor, which is a miserly, almost callous, calculation. Given that a person working 40 hours a week for minimum wage would take in just under €16,000 a year, it could be inferred from this that many Irish adults think it's generous.
Of course, one wonders if the answer might have been different if, instead of presenting a hypothetical family, the question had personalised the scenario and asked respondents at what level they reckoned they would be poor. Nevertheless, these two answers are a sobering glimpse into the population's subconscious.
THE REPUBLIC MAY have become one of the world's richest countries, but the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. However, if we have a large gap between our perceptions of wealth and poverty, isn't it likely to be mirrored by material reality?
Confused priorities are obvious elsewhere in the research, which was carried out by Millward Brown Irish Marketing Surveys. When asked what they believed necessary to consider their life a success, "owning your own home" was reckoned to be more important than "having children".
We might be living in an age of shrinking families, but for a country once known for its large broods it's startling to be told that Irish adults now value bricks over blood. Even among the women surveyed, having a home won out over having children to fill it with. For men, kids came even further down the list after having an "interesting job" and "earning a lot of money". A young population, though, skews the results somewhat.
Among 15- to 24-year-olds, marriage and children were lesser priorities than a good job and salary. And even for those who have children, parenthood came second on the list, behind a good marriage, while the emphasis on money lessened as the age went up. Perhaps "good friends" tops the overall list because they don't cost anything.
Elsewhere in the survey, while 55 per cent said money buys less stress and more excitement, only 17 per cent said it could buy happiness. The same percentage said it could buy good health, even if the reality is that money can buy better healthcare in Ireland - as long as too much of the rest isn't spent on cigarettes and alcohol.
Previous research has told us that we're mostly very happy in our jobs, and that most of us would keep working even if we had enough money to quit. There are echoes of this in the Money Nation survey, in which 78 per cent of people said they were, to some degree, satisfied with the lifestyle they could afford.
But our contradictions showed up in the fact that 75 per cent of people agreed that "there is too much emphasis on materialism in Irish society", while 64 per cent agreed "accumulation of money and possessions are indicators of success".
Then again, for some time now the Irish have stood at the till with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Consumerism and materialism have become
dirty words, but we don't stop indulging.
The Small Firms Association estimates that we will spend a record €22 million an hour this Christmas Eve alone. Yet, we like to nod in agreement when the President, Mary McAleese, gently scolds us for splashing the cash, or when the Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, questions our culture's increasing vulgarity.
Even if, as the worker bees of the economic boom, a lot of Irish people have not only earned their wealth but also the right to spend it on themselves, being brash about it is still frowned upon.
We sometimes act like a lottery winner who feels somewhat guilty at the arrival of sudden wealth, as if we're not quite sure that we should be enjoying it.