There is not much left now. The great wave of energy that was triggered by the resurgence of Irish nationalism in the late 19th century has receded and left but a few institutions standing in its wake.
Irish nationalism itself, in its classic form, is gone, modified almost beyond recognition by the Belfast Agreement. Triumphalist institutional Catholicism, though not quite dead, is clearly on its last legs. The most influential indigenous Catholic order, the Christian Brothers, has, for all the dedication and sincerity of many who served in its ranks, been dragged down to the status of a national and international disgrace. The Gaelic League is still an important organisation but its principal aim - the revival of Irish as the vernacular language of the island - has been abandoned. The big economic aims of the nationalist movement - industrial self-sufficiency and the maintenance of a large population of small farmers - have gone the same way.
Just two institutions can be said to have survived intact from the period of the revival: the GAA and the Abbey Theatre. They may seem to occupy opposite ends of the cultural spectrum but they actually share a great deal as organisations that were founded in the belief that Ireland had a distinctive culture and that its special qualities could be expressed in a positive way. Though both have been, at times, blinkered and ignorant, each has expressed a sense of Irishness through creativity and the production of pleasure and each has, at its best, been an arena in which individual excellence could be given a collective context.
The GAA may be thriving but the Abbey, in its centenary year, is in dire trouble. Last week, in the absence of its artistic director, Ben Barnes, the theatre's management announced to its staff that a third of them are to go because of mounting fiscal deficits. Tonight, an extraordinary general meeting of the National Theatre Society, the body which owns the Abbey, will consider a motion for the dismissal of Mr Barnes. More importantly, the huge reductions in staff suggest that the Abbey's literary and outreach departments will be decimated and that its output, especially in the Peacock where new work is developed, will be severely reduced.
I once worked for a newspaper, the New York Daily News, where legend had it that in the 1960s the headline "Judy Garland Takes Overdose" was kept in permanent type. Though the technology has changed, the equivalent for Irish newspapers over the last century would be "Abbey in Crisis". Yet the very familiarity of the story, combined with the reality that most people don't have much interest in the theatre, adds to the danger that the virtual destruction of an important Irish institution may now unfold to general indifference.
The grotesque possibility that the centenary of one of the few Irish institutions that has a secure place in the history of a major art form will be marked by crisis and collapse does matter, however. At the simple level of public policy, the Government is committed to providing a new home for the Abbey over the next few years. Putting a debilitated wreck into a spanking new building might be an appropriate metaphor for a lot of what's gone on here in the last 10 years, but it would also be absurd. At more complex levels, stark questions arise. Is it really a good idea, on an island struggling towards an accommodation between its various traditions, to allow the greatest legacy of Protestant Ireland to the new State to slip into decay? Is it really a good idea, in a society that sells itself internationally to investors as a centre of creativity and innovation, to let one of its most famous creative institutions fall apart?
The easy answer to these questions is that the Abbey wouldn't be in trouble if it put on plays that filled the theatre. Like most easy answers, though, this one is wrong. Most commercial theatre shows - even the most hard-nosed, profit-driven ones - lose money too. In any case, a commercially-driven theatre can never be a national theatre, taking on painful subjects, developing new forms and new talents, pursuing excellence with the contrary and independent-minded spirit of art.
Besides, the relationship between box-office and quality is not simple. A play that is now recognised as one of the greatest achievements in the Abbey's history, Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert, was a box-office flop.
The real answers lie with a serious Government response to the current crisis. The State is not responsible for the Abbey's problems, but it has certainly contributed to them by the consistent under-funding of the institution. In the context of the centenary and of the plans for a new building, John O'Donoghue should establish, in conjunction with the Abbey, an independent, public review of its operations. It should establish what the public and the theatre community expect of a national theatre, what funding is necessary for those expectations to be met, and what structures will best ensure that the theatre can be a place where the nation's past aspirations and present realities strike off each other and produce the spark of creation.