One in all my trip habits is to take alongside a e-book concerning the place I’m visiting — which is how I discovered myself on Eire’s spectacular Atlantic coast final month, paging by way 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, lovely nation on Europe’s northwestern edge.
Whereas I knew that Eire had up till fairly lately been a poor place by European requirements, I hadn’t realized simply how poor. Inside residing reminiscence, as O’Toole writes, Eire was “an enormous cattle ranch with a couple of cities.” Two-thirds of houses nonetheless had no electrical energy after World Struggle II, and, as late as 1961, most rural homes lacked indoor bogs or sizzling water. In 1961, Eire’s inhabitants was simply 2.8 million, the nadir after many years of decline going again to the Nineteenth century.
But the nation I visited had turn out to be one of the crucial affluent and educated in Europe: a largely liberal, progressive society that now attracts immigrants as an alternative of shedding emigrants. The Irish themselves would say it’s nonetheless removed from good, nevertheless it has turn out to be 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 usually missed. Eire’s arc over the previous 70 years captures that story as few different international locations have.
From poverty to prosperity
Then: Eire’s gross nationwide earnings (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 economic 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 enormous 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, partially 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 as we speak 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 possibility 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 properly. However it wasn’t only a Nineteenth-century phenomenon. Effectively into the second half of the twentieth century, Eire was nonetheless shedding its younger individuals in droves as a result of it merely had no work for them. Within the Nineteen Fifties, an estimated 15 p.c of the nation left.
Now: The state of affairs has largely reversed, with roughly 12 p.c of the nation’s residents now non-Irish residents as of 2022. The place as soon as Eire’s best export was the Irish, as we speak it’s turn out to be a spot that pulls capital, concepts, and folks.
From dropouts to school graduates
Then: Into the mid‑Nineteen Fifties, O’Toole writes, knowledge suggests greater than 80 p.c of pupils left college at age 14, partially as a result of secondary schooling charged charges most households couldn’t afford. However that started to vary in 1966 when the Irish authorities determined to make secondary schooling free for all. For the era of Irish kids like O’Toole, whose father was an unskilled guide laborer, the chance was life-changing.
Now: By some requirements, Eire can declare to be essentially 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 larger.
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 hold authorities jobs in the event that they obtained married, couldn’t purchase contraceptives for contraception, and infrequently couldn’t even be served a pint of beer at a pub.
Now: Eire’s social advances have been even higher than its financial ones. Greater than 60 p.c 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 — grew to become Eire’s taoiseach, or prime minister.
Then: Northern Eire was engulfed in three many years 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 day by day life and straining each economies.
Now: For the reason that 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 economic system and led to widespread struggling. However even then, Eire proved much 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 in opposition to the long-term file of human progress. Eire’s story, with all its detours and its new issues as we speak, like a critical housing disaster, is a case research in precisely that.
A model of this story initially appeared within the Good Information publication. Enroll right here!
