Sir, - A frequent theme being addressed in the letters and features columns of your newspaper is that of the emergence of an "uncaring" Ireland as the Celtic Tiger supposedly transforms this country from a community where everyone knew and cared for each other to an uncaring land of self-seeking individualists. Fr Walter Forde's contribution (Opinion, August 17th) is the latest example of this genre.
As a young Dubliner I don't know what Ireland was like 20 or 40 years ago, but I doubt if it was the homogeneous community of the caring whose departure is now being lamented. Lamenting the loss of an idealised past is a pretty commonplace theme in history, and the phrase "O tempora! O mores!" wasn't coined yesterday.
About 90 years ago W.B. Yeats was lamenting the loss of a romantic Ireland. When did it have a revival? From what I know of the Ireland of yesterday it was a land of considerable poverty that was unable to provide work for its youth, many of whom spent their lives in foreign countries. That is no longer the case and young Irishmen and Irishwomen can now look forward to a future in their own country.
As to being uncaring, I can assure Fr Forde and your other correspondents that young people in Ireland do care for each other. We may not join voluntary organisations in the same numbers as heretofore, but perhaps some of those who did join such organisations did so because they had little else to do with their time. If increased prosperity brings increased options, then presumably the reverse is also the case. As to caring for the marginalised in our society, we care for our friends, whether they be gay or lesbian, unmarried mothers or fathers - people whom the previous Ireland drove to the boat, or to suicide.
I have no doubt that the new Ireland emerging will have its problems, but let's confront them, rather than hankering after a lost Elysium that I suspect has more to do with imagination than with reality. - Yours, etc.,
Robert O'Connor, Crumlin, Dublin 12.