February 2, 2005
LETTER FROM EUROPE
Suddenly Rich, Poor Old Ireland Seems Bewildered By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
DUBLIN - Between sips of caffe latte and laments about the staggering cost of property here, the Irish are beginning to ask themselves a 21st-century question: Who do we want to be, as a country, now that we have all this money?
"We are certainly in new territory," said Joseph O'Connor, a best-selling Irish novelist who recently wrote "Star of the Sea." "We haven't been here before."
It was not so long ago, even less than a generation, that Ireland was a threadbare nation, barely relevant in European affairs. Finding a job meant hopping an airplane out of the country. People counted their pennies, not their commuter miles, and poverty, for many, was a stubborn component of Irish life.
But Ireland's jump into the European Union, along with aggressively pro-business economic policies, changed all that. In a little more than a decade, the so-called Celtic Tiger was transformed from one of the poorest countries in Western Europe to one of the richest in the world. Its gross domestic product per person, not quite 70 percent of the European Union average in 1987, sprang to 136 percent of the union's average by 2003, while the unemployment rate sank to 4 percent from 17 percent.
The transformation was not complete, though, without one additional element. As the economy has flourished, the Roman Catholic Church, arguably the country's mightiest institution, has been wounded by a pedophile scandal.
Taken together, the impact has been profound.
"There are some of us who worship Versace the way our grandmothers worshiped the Virgin Mary," Mr. O'Connor said.
In November, The Economist, in its yearly Intelligence Unit report, cemented Ireland's powerhouse reputation by declaring it the country with the best quality of life in the world.
But that new status is bringing with it an identity crisis, one that is forcing the country, and its government, to grapple with the flip side of wealth and the obligations that money imposes. While few people argue that Ireland was better off 20 years ago, some are beginning to point out that national wealth alone, without introspection, does not necessarily bring happiness. It can, in fact, bring new problems.
How, for example, should a country once known for sending legions of people abroad deal with its own crop of immigrants? What does it mean to be Irish, given that so much of the national psyche is tied up in centuries of poverty?
Irish newspapers have been filled with accounts of the pitfalls of growth, secularization and wealth, some of them trivial, a few of them serious: suicide is at record levels, divorce is increasingly common, property prices are soaring, traffic is horrendous, personal debt is spiraling up, faceless commuter suburbs are sprouting and teenagers are taking too many drugs and buying too many things. Even the high cost of a cup of coffee has become a lightning rod, prompting people here to label the country Rip-Off Ireland.
A survey released last week by a market research group, Mintel Ireland, showed that most people did not feel their lifestyle had improved in recent years, primarily because the cost of living had exploded. Dubliners are the most dissatisfied. Another study pointed out that stress levels everywhere in Ireland are ballooning.
Emily O'Reilly, the government's ombudsman and information commissioner, fanned the debate over Ireland's new identity in a November speech bemoaning the country's misplaced values in the wake of its economic success and flourishing secularization.
"Many of us recoil at the vulgar fest that is much of modern Ireland," Ms. O'Reilly began, before going on to cite its plunge into materialism, foul language, random violence, moral poverty and the culture of immediate gratification.
"Divorce was meant to be for the deeply unhappy, not the mildly bored," she said. "Sunday shopping was supposed to be a convenience for the harassed worker, not a new religion.
"Released from the handcuff of mass religious obedience, we are Dionysian in our revelry, in our testing of what we call freedom," she continued. "Hence the staggering drink consumption, the childlike showing off of helicopters and four-wheel drives and private cinemas, the fetishizing of handbags and high heels."
The speech drew both applause and derision, with many saying that Ms. O'Reilly was succumbing to the Irish penchant for gloom.
Few, however, disagree that Ireland needs to do more to care for its poor, and to spend more on health care and schools.
"A lot of people here don't even know what the Celtic Tiger is," said Chris McCarthy, who lives in Teresa's Gardens, a poor enclave of Dublin, and works in its community center. "The Celtic Tiger has just passed us by."
Indeed, as the Rev. Sean J. Healy, director of the justice commission of the Conference of Religious of Ireland, an influential group here, noted, the average wage is still only about $40,000. The government, he says, needs to strike a "balance between the social and the economic."
"We have enough money now for the first time to tackle poverty, inequality and a poor infrastructure," he added.
Eradicating poverty, everyone agrees, is a worthwhile goal. But Ireland was so poor for so long, and its poverty was so ingrained in its identity, that some wonder whether Irish culture and character - its keen sense of community, its sharp humor in the face of hardship - will be steamrolled by the rollicking economy.
Mr. O'Connor, the writer, said a degree of reflection and self-criticism was welcome, but not if it spoiled the party altogether. The arts community, for example, is flourishing; there are more writers, painters, poets and musicians than ever before. Comedians and comedy abound, he notes, more so than in the past.
"Yes, people are commuting long distances now," he said. "But not nearly so long as the commute to, say, Australia, which is where many people had to go to find jobs a generation ago."
If anything, all the hyperventilating about Dublin's dazzling transformation seems to have confounded people, who are asking, basically, is this as good as it gets? "If Ireland is the best place to live," Mr. O'Connor said, good-naturedly, "God help us."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/international/europe/02letter.html
