One in all my trip habits is to take alongside a ebook in regards to the place I’m visiting — which is how I discovered myself on Eire’s spectacular Atlantic coast final month, paging by means of a duplicate of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Private Historical past of Trendy Eire. O’Toole, a distinguished Irish journalist, makes use of the years of his personal life, starting in 1958, to inform the story of the modifications which have taken place on this small, stunning nation on Europe’s northwestern edge.
Whereas I knew that Eire had up till fairly just lately been a poor place by European requirements, I hadn’t realized simply how poor. Inside dwelling reminiscence, as O’Toole writes, Eire was “an unlimited cattle ranch with just a few cities.” Two-thirds of properties nonetheless had no electrical energy after World Conflict II, and, as late as 1961, most rural homes lacked indoor bogs or scorching water. In 1961, Eire’s inhabitants was simply 2.8 million, the nadir after a long time of decline going again to the Nineteenth century.
But the nation I visited had change into some of the affluent and educated in Europe: a largely liberal, progressive society that now attracts immigrants as a substitute of dropping emigrants. The Irish themselves would say it’s nonetheless removed from excellent, nevertheless it has change into one thing few may have predicted when O’Toole was born in 1958.
One in all my targets at Good Information is to counter our constructed‑in bias towards unhealthy headlines by spotlighting the gradual, compounding enchancment over time that’s too typically missed. Eire’s arc over the previous 70 years captures that story as few different nations have.
From poverty to prosperity
Then: Eire’s gross nationwide revenue (GNI) per particular person — what people really earned on common — within the early Seventies was round $2,000, the mark of a small, nonetheless largely farming-based financial system, whereas the US was greater than twice that.
Now: Eire’s modified GNI per particular person has soared to round $60,000, thanks largely to its success in attracting large quantities of international funding, particularly from main tech firms like Meta and Apple. (Economists use a modified GNI per capita exactly as a result of these multinational firms shift a big portion of their earnings to Eire, partly for tax causes; modified GNI strips that out, higher reflecting what Irish households and companies really earn.)
From quick lives to lengthy ones
Then: In 1961, life expectancy was round 70 years, and toddler mortality hovered at 30 deaths per 1,000 births — a determine corresponding to what we’d see at the moment in a poor nation like Laos.
Now: Life expectancy has climbed to about 83 years, whereas toddler deaths have plunged to only 3.4 per 1,000. Nearly each Irish baby now will get the prospect to reside a protracted and wholesome life.
From mass emigration to web immigration
Then: Emigration has at all times been a part of the Irish story, as Irish-Individuals like myself know nicely. But it surely wasn’t only a Nineteenth-century phenomenon. Nicely into the second half of the twentieth century, Eire was nonetheless dropping its younger individuals in droves as a result of it merely had no work for them. Within the Nineteen Fifties, an estimated 15 % of the nation left.
Now: The state of affairs has largely reversed, with roughly 12 % of the nation’s residents now non-Irish residents as of 2022. The place as soon as Eire’s best export was the Irish, at the moment it’s change into a spot that pulls capital, concepts, and folks.
From dropouts to college graduates
Then: Into the mid‑Nineteen Fifties, O’Toole writes, knowledge suggests greater than 80 % of pupils left faculty at age 14, partly as a result of secondary training charged charges most households couldn’t afford. However that started to vary in 1966 when the Irish authorities determined to make secondary training free for all. For the technology of Irish youngsters like O’Toole, whose father was an unskilled handbook laborer, the chance was life-changing.
Now: By some requirements, Eire can declare to be probably the most educated nation on the planet, with greater than half its inhabitants between the ages of 25 to 64 holding a bachelor’s diploma or greater.
From cloistered conservatism to open liberalism
Then: Eire within the early Seventies was ruled by extremely conservative legal guidelines: Homosexuality was criminalized, divorce was banned, and abortion was unthinkable. The Catholic Church censored popular culture, and ladies had shockingly few rights: They may not preserve authorities jobs in the event that they obtained married, couldn’t purchase contraceptives for contraception, and sometimes couldn’t even be served a pint of beer at a pub.
Now: Eire’s social advances have been even larger than its financial ones. Greater than 60 % of the nation voted for marriage equality in 2015, whereas two-thirds voted to repeal the constitutional ban on abortion in 2018. The Catholic Church has totally receded as a controlling pressure, in no small half due to surprising revelations about abuse. How far has Eire come? In 2017, Leo Varadkar — the homosexual son of an Indian immigrant — turned Eire’s taoiseach, or prime minister.
Then: Northern Eire was engulfed in three a long time of the Troubles, a battle that claimed over 3,500 lives, most of them civilians caught in bombings, shootings, and political violence. This trauma spilled throughout the border, overshadowing every day life and straining each economies.
Now: Because the 1998 Good Friday Settlement, formally recorded crimes have fallen steeply — 2024–’25 noticed simply 95,968 offenses in Northern Eire, the second-lowest degree since 1998–’99. The border between the north and south, as soon as tense and hardened, is now all however invisible.
The Irish story of progress is hardly an unbroken one. The previous 70 years have seen booms adopted by busts — by no means extra so than after the 2008 world recession, which hammered the Irish financial system and led to widespread struggling. However even then, Eire proved way more profitable than lots of its fellow European nations in bouncing again. That’s a part of the Good Information story — not ignoring the crashes, however holding them towards the long-term file of human progress. Eire’s story, with all its detours and its new issues at the moment, like a severe housing disaster, is a case examine in precisely that.
A model of this story initially appeared within the Good Information publication. Join right here!
