The tens were the decade that saw the Celtic Tiger trip and stumble. Low unemployment turned out to have its downside with increasing skill shortages and rapid rises in labour costs. The former prevented many multinationals from locating here in the first place, while the latter has resulted in many leaving our shores over the last four years for more cost-effective economies such as India and Poland. Irish businesses have soaked up the best of those made redundant but the loss of some multinational customers has slowed their own growth in turn.
The country's infrastructure has continued to develop in a haphazard manner with little evidence of a cohesive national vision. The regions consequently failed to take off in the way promised and the continued insistence of large businesses to locate in major urban areas has resulted in the regions' potential being far from fulfilled. Depopulation of the rural environment has continued, cities have sprawled, and most farmers are now only part-timers.
Early in the decade the downshifting backlash began in earnest. People found themselves with more money than ever before yet with less time to look after family matters - particularly with more and more women in the workplace.
In 2003 the availability of leisure time became a big political and industrial relations issue. Employers found themselves forced to respond with more flexible working environments just to hold the employees they already had. While everyone welcomed the change at first, this additional leisure time forced labour costs even higher.
The leisure benefits have also not been equally distributed amongst employees: increasingly we have seen a polarisation between those in well-paid employment who have the choice to prioritise family over work, and those on low incomes whose only choice is unemployment. The last decade has therefore seen a transformation in the politics of inequality from a focus on income to a concern about time.