Which way is Ireland going?

When I first visited Ireland 20 years ago, it was exotic. A hop across the water from London was a country that wasn't quite developed. Houses were so badly insulated that you felt cold indoors. There were barely any motorways or immigrants. In fact, half the men I met seemed to have been Catholic choirboys. Divorce was illegal. Up in Northern Ireland there was terrorist warfare. Even in the south, memories of British rule were still so raw that people hearing my accent in pubs would launch into anti-British tirades.

On several recent visits, I've found everything changed. Ireland has been on a 20-year rollercoaster ride. First came the Celtic Tiger boom, then economic meltdown, and in the latest jolt, Ireland is now the European Union's boomiest economy. The European Commission expects 4.6 per cent growth this year. Meanwhile, Irish identity has also metamorphosed. No wonder people here feel confused.

Few countries fell harder in 2008. Just two years after being called the world's second wealthiest nation, Ireland was bailing out its banks. Gross cost: about €65bn. The 4.6 million Irish will be paying that off until 2042, predicts economist Stephen Kinsella. Add personal debt, and Ireland may now be the world's most indebted nation. Specific generations fell hardest, says Martha O'Hagan-Luff, lecturer in finance at Trinity College Dublin: twentysomethings who had to emigrate, and thirtysomethings who bought overpriced houses in the late boom. Other victims: anyone who needs social services.

The fiasco discredited Ireland's political and financial elite. Admittedly, the elite is hanging in there, notes Kinsella. Stroll around Dublin's south side, its Georgian houses in perfect nick, prices rising weekly, and you'd never guess the crisis happened. People here who bought their homes early and kept their jobs are doing just fine. Only a very few elite individuals were scapegoated: Bertie Ahern, beloved boom-time prime minister, nowadays stands alone staring into the sea on holiday in County Kerry.

But anyone who ran Ireland is now distrusted. That includes the once almighty church, done for by long-term sexual abuse. In middle-class Ireland today, piety is considered eccentric, says David McWilliams, co-founder of the brilliant Kilkenomics festival, where many Irish flock to try to understand what hit them.

Even Ireland's geography has shifted. During the Celtic Tiger years, its self-image became modern European. After rule by Brits, bishops and then bankers, Ireland for much of the crisis was practically run from Germany. In 2011, Bundestag parliamentarians reviewed the Irish budget before Ireland's Dail could. Also, we recently learnt how the European Central Bank in Frankfurt bullied Ireland into the bailout.

Meanwhile, says McWilliams, the crisis clarified that Ireland belongs in the Anglosphere. When Irish people began emigrating again, they went to the usual destinations: Australia, the UK and US. Few moved to continental Europe. Ireland's biggest trading partners are the UK and US. No wonder American tech companies will still get sweet deals here even after Brussels pushed Dublin into ending the "Double Irish" tax break. Apple's tax rate may climb to 6.25 per cent; many Irish people pay marginal rates above 50 per cent.

The biggest Irish transformation concerns daily life. Despite everything, so much is better now. The Celtic Tiger's legacy includes motorways and warm homes. "The house I grew up in, you wouldn't live in it now," says Kinsella. Divorce is now legal. A referendum next year will probably pass gay marriage too. Abortion is still banned but has effectively been outsourced to Britain. The brutal "industrial schools", and mother-and-baby "homes" that killed many babies of unwed women, are gone. (Ireland used to incarcerate without trial a larger share of its people than the USSR did, calculates the writer Fintan O'Toole.)

Moreover, though many immigrants fled during the crisis, Ireland remains multicultural. I met a Pole in Kilkenny who spoke English like an Irishman: "It would be, like . . . " instead of "It is . . . "

. . .

Ireland has also become savvier, says the comedian Colm O'Regan. Gone are naive conversations about eternally rising property prices. Instead, ordinary people can now explain what a senior bondholder is. "I quite like Ireland now," says O'Regan. "It doesn't seem like we're sleepwalking into stuff any more. We've woken up with a hangover and mouth ulcer but we're awake."

Awake but disoriented, cautions economist Cormac Lucey. People are angry: perhaps 100,000 marched recently against new charges on water. Ireland has jettisoned its old leaders without finding new ones. The void may be filled by a relic of the northern civil war, Gerry Adams. The former terrorists' apologist has recast himself as economic populist, and his Sinn Fein is Ireland's most popular party, say pollsters Millward Brown. No matter that Adams was questioned this year over the 1972 murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville (he denies involvement) or that he has been accused of covering up a rape inside the IRA. Speaking at a fundraiser in New York (American political donations now distort foreign political systems too), Adams dismissed the raped woman's claims, then joked about holding a newspaper editor "at gunpoint".

This man could become prime minister, warns Lucey. That's the measure of Irish disorientation.

[email protected], Twitter @KuperSimon

Illustration by Luis Granena

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