I know that many people are conscious of the fact that social change in Ireland has been rapid in recent years. But I don't think there is as yet sufficient realisation of just how fast this change has been, writes Garret FitzGerald
I have to say that I have been astonished at the evidence provided by recently published census data about the scale of changes in the socio-economic composition of the population within the short space of six years between 1996 and 2002.
First I should perhaps explain that, for the purpose of computing the share of the population which falls into each socio-economic group, the dependants of workers are assimilated to the socio-economic group of the person on whom they are deemed to be dependent; unemployed and retired people being classified according to their previous occupations.
During the period the total population rose by just 8 per cent, but the number classified as belonging to the manual-worker group fell by a remarkable 22 per cent, while those classified as engaged in agriculture also fell by 32 per cent. By contrast, the number classified as "professional" rose by 30 per cent, and the employers and managers group rose by a phenomenal 47 per cent.
The consequence of all this is that, during this brief period, the manual-worker share of the population dropped by 8 percentage points, from 31 to 23 per cent, and the employer, manager and professional component jumped from 24 per cent to almost 31 per cent.
This reversed the previous relative scale of these two groups within the population structure, reflecting a scale of upward social mobility that one might expect over several decades rather than just six years.
The growth of some occupational groups during this period has been quite phenomenal, reflecting well on the capacity of our training and education system to respond rapidly to changing demand, as well as on the adaptability of our labour force. Thus between 1996 and 2002 the numbers engaged in computer software occupations almost doubled to 36,000, while four other occupations - business and commerce; management; building and construction; and social work and associated occupations - achieved increases of between 60 per cent and 75 per cent in their numbers. The numbers in scientific and technical occupations also rose by more than half.
Even if anyone had had the imagination and temerity in the mid-1990s to suggest that we should plan for these kinds of growth rates in a whole range of skilled occupations, he or she would have been told by all our experts - with whom, I have to say, I would have concurred - that such a scale of labour demand could not possibly arise within such a short timescale, and that even if it did, we could not conceivably supply to these five sectors alone almost 30,000 more skilled workers annually over the space of six years.
Where did all these additional workers come from? Until we see an age breakdown for these occupations in 2002, which will be provided in a later census volume, we will not be able to answer this question satisfactorily.
A small number of these workers may have been retrained after losing jobs in declining sectors of our economy such as textiles and clothing, where employment more than halved between 1996 and 2002, or from declining parts of the food-processing sector.
But clearly most of the entry to these skilled occupations must have been young people emerging from our very flexible education and training systems.
Of course, throughout the 1990s the level of education of the workforce was being rapidly raised. Between 1991 and 2002 the number of workers who in their youth received only primary education was reduced by nearly 200,000, or almost 30 per cent, while the number with third-level education more than doubled, from 300,000 to 650,000. Economic studies suggest that this upskilling of the labour force accounts for almost 1 per cent extra national output each year.
Ireland was, of course, one of the first European countries to have grasped the economic importance of education. The sixfold increase in the scale of the higher education system over the past 35 years has made an enormous contribution to the rise in national productivity and to the 2½-fold improvement in average material living standards during this period.
Last year's census is the first to have investigated the scale of disability in society. Almost 325,000, or 8 per cent of the population, have declared some level of disability, including three in every eight of those over 70, but we shall have to await a later census volume to learn how many of these suffer from a disability of sight or hearing, and how many have a physical disability affecting their power to move, or to lift or carry.
The census also revealed that 150,000 people provide some unpaid help to the ill or disabled. Of these, 40 per cent spend more than 15 hours a week on this work, but most of these more active, unpaid carers are engaged in caring for over 43 hours a week.
The exchequer provision to assist carers is strictly limited to extreme cases of hardship but, as economic conditions improve, the availability for the first time of census data on both disability and caring may contribute to a decision to improve these arrangements.