A striking feature of the Irish psyche both before and after independence was the existence of a deep-seated inferiority complex vis-α-vis Britain - which was, of course, matched by an equally deep-seated superiority complex among English people vis-α-vis Ireland. On both sides of the Irish Sea the colonial relationship between the two islands had bitten deep.
On the Irish side this contributed to a curious reluctance to recognise the extent to which from the early 19th century onwards successive Irish leaders achieved important victories in contests with entrenched British and colonist interests - victories that outside these islands were recognised and admired.
In Ireland Daniel O'Connell's triumph in securing Catholic emancipation seems to have been later displaced in the Irish mind by the failures of subsequent rebellions; that of the Land League and the Irish Party in eventually persuading British governments to buy out the Irish landlords appears to have been blotted out by the tragic fall and death of Parnell; and the success of the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence in securing the establishment of an Irish State was effectively obliterated by the tragic Civil War that followed.
The remarkable diplomatic success of our first Government in leading the process of transforming the British Empire into a Commonwealth of sovereign independent States - a forerunner of later successful Irish negotiations during the first two decades of EC membership - simply never registered with our domestic opinion.
Although there was momentary satisfaction with de Valera's successful negotiation of the 1938 Agreement with Britain, and some, perhaps slightly guilty, pride in the maintenance of neutrality during the second World War, this was soon displaced by a sense of failure, culminating in the almost total collapse of national self-confidence in the late 1950s.
In the following two decades, with the growth of the economy and the management of the early stages of our EC membership, national self-esteem recovered somewhat, but, because of the disastrous consequences of the mismanagement of our economy in the late 1970s, this proved short-lived.
Has the more recent Celtic Tiger now finally transformed the Irish psyche? Are we now a self-confident people, finally purged of our centuries-old inferiority complex? I think we have in fact come a long way - far enough to be likely to survive the current economic set-back without being plunged once again into despondency.
But I do not think we have developed the kind of confidence in our political system that we shall need if people and politicians are to face successfully together the challenges of the next few decades. Indeed it is common currency that confidence in politics and politicians is now at a very low ebb indeed.
How can this be, in the case of a country that has achieved a literally unparalleled degree of economic success?
In some strange way our politicians have perversely succeeded in totally hiding from the people their responsibility for our economic miracle - for that is how our recent experience is seen everywhere outside Ireland. There is absolutely no public realisation here that our recent extraordinary economic success is the product of key decisions taken over many decades by particular politicians, and sustained thereafter by their successors in office of whatever party - a process that has produced a rare consistency of economic policy.
How else, indeed, could such an extraordinary outcome have been achieved? Do people really believe that it has all been an accident - that an 8.2 per cent economic growth rate achieved throughout a period of eight years just happened of its own accord? That politics had nothing to do with it?
Yes, I think that this is what our electorate has come to believe. And the fact that we seem to have been able to convince ourselves of this impossibility is, I think, a reflection of a combination of disastrous public relations on the part of our politicians, and poor political reporting and exclusively short-term political analysis by much of our media - which tends to concentrate on the trivia of politics.
This process has, moreover, been aided by the way in which both Irish historians and political commentators have tended to put economics and politics in separate compartments - ignoring their seamless relationship.
Our politicians certainly bear a lot of the blame for their own failure to secure credit for their achievements. The dross of day-to-day politics, together with the financial greed and misbehaviour of a tiny minority of politicians, have together blinded the electorate to the fact that over the past 45 years Irish politicians have been much more successful than others in Europe in laying the foundations for rapid economic growth.
Our unprecedented economic growth is a function of the coincidence of a quite exceptional demand for Irish labour that emerged at precisely the time when demographic factors were creating an equally exceptional, and temporary, increase in the supply of such labour.
This exceptional demand for Irish labour in Ireland was the cumulative consequence of six decisions taken over a period of 30 years.
1. The low rate of Corporation Tax initiated in 1956 through the halving, and shortly afterwards total exemption from taxation, of export profits, and the extension of industrial grants to the whole country.
2. The establishment and development of the Industrial Development Authority as an industrial promotion agency.
3. The five-fold to six-fold expansion of our educational system initiated by the introduction of free secondary education in 1968.
4. Irish accession to the EC in 1973 and successful Irish diplomacy within that framework during most of the following two decades.
5. The reversal of irresponsible budgetary policies from 1981 onwards.
6. The winding-down of excessive pay increases after 1981 and the subsequent initiation of social partnership in 1987.
What has been striking about this policy development process, which finally came to yield spectacular results after 1993, has been the consistency with which successive governments of different political complexions carried through these policies.
What must, of course, be added is that these political achievements could never have taken place but for the quality of the advice that our politicians secured from the late 1950s onwards from such distinguished public servants as Ken Whitaker and Hugh McCann and their successors, and from outside advisers like Alexis FitzGerald - and from Paddy Lynch who, sadly, died last weekend, having served in both capacities at different times.
Without the help of these, and countless others engaged in policy formulation both inside or outside the civil service, the politicians would not have had the material upon which to base the wise decisions they took at key moments in our recent history.
gfitzgerald@irish-times.ie