Kay draws on a rich blend of research, interviews with a broad spectrum of Irish society, and his own decades of personal experience to tell the story of Ireland today. He guides the reader through the country's major economic challenges, political transformation, social change, the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church, and the rise of gay rights and multiculturalism. He takes us through the streets of Derry and Belfast to understand the Northern Ireland peace process and the daunting task of peace building that has only just begun. Finally, we see how Irish foreign policy has long been a model for balancing competing interests and values. Kay concludes by highlighting Ireland's lessons for the world and mapping a vital path for twenty-first-century challenges and opportunities for the coming generations in Ireland and beyond.
Kay draws on a rich blend of research, interviews with a broad spectrum of Irish society, and his own decades of personal experience to tell the story of Ireland today. He guides the reader through the country's major economic challenges, political transformation, social change, the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church, and the rise of gay rights and multiculturalism. He takes us through the streets of Derry and Belfast to understand the Northern Ireland peace process and the daunting task of peace building that has only just begun. Finally, we see how Irish foreign policy has long been a model for balancing competing interests and values. Kay concludes by highlighting Ireland's lessons for the world and mapping a vital path for twenty-first-century challenges and opportunities for the coming generations in Ireland and beyond.
Celtic Revival?: The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland
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Celtic Revival?: The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland
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Overview
Kay draws on a rich blend of research, interviews with a broad spectrum of Irish society, and his own decades of personal experience to tell the story of Ireland today. He guides the reader through the country's major economic challenges, political transformation, social change, the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church, and the rise of gay rights and multiculturalism. He takes us through the streets of Derry and Belfast to understand the Northern Ireland peace process and the daunting task of peace building that has only just begun. Finally, we see how Irish foreign policy has long been a model for balancing competing interests and values. Kay concludes by highlighting Ireland's lessons for the world and mapping a vital path for twenty-first-century challenges and opportunities for the coming generations in Ireland and beyond.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781442211094 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/19/2011 |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Celtic Revival?
The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global IrelandBy Sean Kay
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Copyright © 2011 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4422-1109-4
Chapter One
Dublin in the Rare Old Times
RING A RING A ROSIE, AS THE LIGHT DECLINES, I REMEMBER DUBLIN CITY IN THE RARE OLD TIMES
Few musical groups capture the spirit of Ireland like The Dubliners, and the song "Dublin in the Rare Old Times," sung by the great Ronnie Drew, can send a chill down the spine of anyone who has lived through the changes that Ireland has witnessed. A folk song with an eye toward the nostalgic days of yesteryear, the tune gains new meaning in the early twenty-first century. New generations of Irish are thinking of a different "rare old time"—the Celtic Tiger—and wondering what went wrong and what the future holds. This country has moved from isolation to become the most globalized economy in the world. It moved from the economic stagnation of the 1980s to become one of the wealthiest countries in Europe during the Celtic Tiger, then to face economic ruin as one of the largest debtor countries in the world by 2010. Had it promised what Ireland did in its initial bank guarantee in 2008, the United States would have provided the equivalent of over $30 trillion. In the space of several years, the Irish people lost faith in their economy, confidence in their government, and trust in their church. This book traces how such rapid and dynamic change has impacted Ireland and draws lessons for people around the world. Today, citizens everywhere are grappling with economic crisis; political transformation; social challenges like crime, health, and education; religious and cultural change; peace; and globalization. Ireland has something to say about these issues and can, perhaps, help us all toward progress in the twenty-first century.
IRELAND AT THE GLOBAL CROSSROADS
Writing about Ireland is no easy task. Yes, this small island is home to just 4.5 million in the Republic of Ireland and another 1.8 million in Northern Ireland. One can drive across this country in a few hours—though on some days it can seem to take nearly as long to get from one end of Dublin to the other. One street can make a world of difference on this island, where symbols of past, present, and future dreams lie everywhere. It is a relatively straightforward place to describe—telling the story of independence, the building of political and economic institutions, integration with the European Union, the troubles of the North, or the special Irish-American relationship. To know the land and people, however, requires a recognition that this is a place with many layers of reality. There is a reason that Sigmund Freud is famously quoted (probably incorrectly, though) as saying of the Irish, "This is the one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
A software engineer I met with in Dublin while writing this book framed the issue with a joke: "How many Irish does it take to screw in a light bulb?" he asked. The answer is none because "the Irish fellow says, 'Oh, it's grand, I'll be happy enough just sitting here in the dark.'" The Irish have a unique A road sign to nowhere at the entrance to the now largely abandoned Shannon development zone, once a leading case for the globalization of the Celtic Tiger. ability to put on the blinders and move forward. One defense mechanism, deeply embedded in culture, has been to say, "We don't talk about that"—a statement applicable to nearly any topic. This tool was useful during the British occupation, a time when boasting or showing weaknesses invited danger. But putting on the blinders can also lead to a serious inability to grapple with change and thus incur very high costs. As early as 2005, it was clear that Ireland was highly vulnerable to the shifting winds of globalization and internal political and economic mismanagement. It would not take much to send the country into a deep economic tailspin. Yet, there were three general reactions: "Ah, come on, man, it'll be fine," "Ah sure, I know, but we might as well enjoy it while we can," and "We don't talk about that." Meanwhile, the government and bankers were keeping the economy afloat—and protecting their newfound millions—by playing a high-wire casino game of credit and mortgages to sustain growth from 2001 to 2008. In September 2008, the entire country hit an economic wall as the economy crashed. In a deeply troubling moment, former Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern had said to an applauding audience in 2007, in reference to individuals who were talking down the economy—"cribbing and moaning," he called it—"I don't know why people who engage in that don't commit suicide."
Ireland—north and south, east and west—is a place of common identity and deep difference. One can travel there for decades and still not dig down to the essence of the place—if such a thing exists. There is also an understandable wariness of outsiders coming in and telling Ireland what it should do. At the same time, as one person I met said, "people are eager to talk to you—we need someone to give us a collective kick in the ass." I frequently ran into friends quizzically curious to know if I had figured out what the heck was going on. In reality, no one knows where things are headed in Ireland or the world. We are at a moment of transition that has people from Dublin to Detroit to Singapore to Sligo anxious about their futures, yet cautiously looking for the light and opportunity at the end of the tunnel.
At the end of a recent visit, just hours before flying back to the United States, I took a walk to the top of Howth Summit, just north of Dublin. Walking alone up the hill, I encountered a gorgeous horse looking at me over a fence. I stopped for a moment and took a step forward, but the horse turned away. Yet, it never took its eye off of me. It seemed to turn as far as it could without taking its eye away—always sizing me up. Funnily enough, as I took a step back, the horse looked straight on and ... nodded in a welcoming and trusting way—or so it seemed. To me, that summed up much of my experience of doing intensive research in a country like Ireland—working with a beautiful people who are always sizing you up with a wary eye but, in the end, are welcoming and trusting.
Given the economic calamity facing the Irish people, they wanted to talk more than ever, about virtually anything and everything, when discussing this book. In fact, I have never spent so much time talking with people about the things we do not talk about! From Sinéad O'Connor to seniorranking priests in the Dublin archdiocese, from former prime ministers to my friends at the local pub, from senior members of the Labour Party to politicians with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, from economists to social workers and union leaders, from entrepreneurs to software designers, from human rights activists in Derry to senior police officials in Belfast to members of the Independent Monitoring Commission working on disarming paramilitary forces, from the chief of staff of the Irish Defence Forces and the foreign minister to antiwar and proneutrality protesters—everyone wanted to talk. People of all walks of life pondered a significant, even philosophical question: What kind of Ireland do we want to be?
This book seeks to spark a conversation about Ireland in order to draw lessons at a global level—especially for my own country, the United States. I worked as a member of the informal team that, from 2007 to 2008, advised Barack Obama's presidential campaign on foreign policy, which included providing occasional analytical support on Irish issues. I recall a moment during a presidential debate in which the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, said, "Right now, the United States of American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent.... Now, if you're a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then, obviously, if you go to the country where it's 11 percent tax versus 35 percent, you're going to be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment, etc." This quote reflects the nearly complete disconnect that politicians had from the realities in Ireland, the United States, or anywhere else. During a recent visit, one image stood out to me as symbolizing the stark reality of how this divergence played out in Ireland. While Dublin has always had street beggars, there were more than I could ever remember. One sunny afternoon, walking up Henry Street toward O'Connell Street, I saw a derelict man lying face down and motionless in a shop doorway. I quickly noticed that he was okay; yet, it dawned on me that, for all I knew, this man might have been laying there dead. I—along with tens of thousands of others—would have merrily walked by, paying no mind. Is that the kind of Ireland we want? Is that the kind of America we want? Is this the kind of world we want?
The McCain quote from the 2008 debate came at the very moment when the Irish economy was crashing into one of the deepest economic catastrophes in the history of the modern world. It was as if a category-five hurricane had converged as a perfect storm of global crisis and internal political and financial disaster. Fintan O'Toole, one of Ireland's leading commentators, points out in Ship of Fools the harsh reality of the Celtic Tiger. By 2009, the economy was expected to begin shrinking by 13 percent, making Ireland's the worst national economic performance among the world's advanced economies and "one of the worst ever recorded in peacetime in the developed world." Per capita debt was €37,000, 25 percent of office spaces in Dublin were vacant, and the Irish stock exchange had fallen by 68 percent. Average family income had been cut nearly in half between 2006 and 2010—not including the dramatic decline in housing values. O'Toole shows that, in a comparative perspective, ten years after the Celtic Tiger economy took off, Ireland's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was just a bit higher than that of Mississippi and Arkansas—two of the United States' poorest states. By 2006, just before the economic crash, Ireland's gross national product (GNP) would have ranked the country equal to the sixth-poorest state in the United States. Between 2000 and 2006, Ireland was shedding nearly twenty thousand jobs per year, hidden by a bubble of construction and uncapitalized mortgages. By 2009, Ireland's per capita income about equaled that of the United States, with an average of $46,200. This was not bad for a country that had, just twenty-five years earlier, been on the edge of national poverty. Indeed, a central point emerges in this book that while times are really bad in Ireland, the starting point has better foundations than the country has ever before enjoyed. Still, the challenges are huge. Ireland, by 2010, had some of the highest prices in Europe, among the highest relative poverty in Europe at 20 percent, a sovereign debt crisis, a 32 percent budget deficit, and 14 percent unemployment. This is what Senator McCain thought was a good idea for the United States—let alone Ireland?
LIKE A MONET PAINTING FROM AFAR
This book does not seek to reconstruct the growth of the Celtic Tiger or to explain again why it collapsed. Excellent books have covered this topic already—particularly Shane Ross's The Bankers: How the Banks Brought Ireland to Its Knees (2010), Fintan O'Toole's Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (2010), Matt Cooper's Who Really Runs Ireland: The Story of the Elite That Led Ireland from Bust to Boom ... and Back Again (2010), and David Lynch's, When the Luck of the Irish Ran Out (2010). The current volume explores major changes that took place before, during, and after the Celtic Tiger that illustrate dramatic challenges and opportunities. It shows how, in a very short period, globalization reshaped Ireland, which serves as a microcosm of the twenty-first-century world. Ireland mirrors many of the fundamental abilities—or inabilities—of other societies to address contemporary challenges. The central argument is that, despite serious ongoing challenges, there is tremendous opportunity for Ireland, the United States, and the world to make progress in this new century. The real issue is not a matter of "Yes, we can!" as presidential candidate Barack Obama asserted during the 2008 American campaign. Rather, for Ireland, the United States, and the world, it is "Will we?"
Ireland has a perception problem. From the outside, it is viewed as a quaint place with lovely green hills, nice beer, good music, and welcoming people. All of this is true, of course, but reflects only one layer of the real Ireland. Generations of emigrants saw Ireland through a prism of nationalism and cultural identification—even if that meant passing the hat in Boston, Chicago, and New York pubs to raise money for an Irish Republican Army that had nothing to do with the heroes of 1916. When my wife, who was raised in Clonsilla in west Dublin, first came to the United States in 1986, the kind family she lived with politely took the time to show her how a television set worked. Perhaps they turned on The Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara? Well intentioned as her hosts were, Ireland did in fact have television at the time—yes, just a few channels, but they worked! When I first started visiting Ireland in 1987, many American friends said to me that it must be hard going to such a violent and war-torn place—only to realize they were talking about the North, which had little to do with life in the Republic. Meanwhile, the American vision of leprechauns and St. Patrick's Day served as a nice, though flawed, image of the country. In fact, St. Patrick's Day as currently celebrated with parties and parades is largely an American invention. I often play Irish music in a pub in the United States on March 17, only to note that most of the American audience would not know "Carrickfergus," "Finnegan's Wake," or the "Fields of Athenry" if it hit them on the head. In the United States, the day is really an excuse for a national drinking binge. Ireland today has "stolen it back," as one senior government economist told me, turning it into a weeklong tourist attraction and party—Dublin's Mardi Gras. A priest in Ireland said to me that the day has effectively turned pagan. One thing is certain—no self-respecting Irish person would ever drink green beer.
Ireland is often perceived from the outside as a reactionary, conservative, Catholic country. Debates in New York City about whether the organizers of the annual St. Patrick's Day parade had a right to ban gays from marching reflected this view. Just twenty years ago, it was technically illegal to be gay in Ireland. You would not know that from watching the annual Gay Pride Parade that now runs through Dublin. Over five thousand marchers come from all walks of life—gays, straights, teachers, police, you name it. In July 2010, Ireland passed national civil-partnership legislation recognizing the legal rights of gay couples. The majority favoring this was so overwhelming that passage did not require a final parliamentary vote. I watched the debates inside the parliament chambers and also walked outside among the antigay protesters—all five of them. This Catholic country has more progressive human rights guarantees for gays and lesbians than the United States. Former finance minister and senior Labour Party politician Ruairi Quinn has said since the early 1990s that Ireland is a "post-Catholic" country. Yet, Quinn told me that the relationship between the church and society is, nonetheless, still "the elephant in the room."
In 2010, perception and reality converged on an Ireland mired in catastrophic financial crisis with few options for moving forward. Deeply in debt, with banks not lending, housing values collapsing, consumer prices through the roof, an already overtaxed population, and an undertaxed corporate world, the country faced 14 percent unemployment, deep austerity, and a sustained, painful transition that cut to the core of nearly every family. The Irish people had to be reminded of their potential as doubt pervaded the nation. For example, Niall O'Dowd, founder of the Irish American magazine The Irish Voice, is one of the United States' most important commentators on Irish perspectives. An Irish-born emigrant who came to the United States in the 1980s, Niall O'Dowd is a thoughtful observer of events in his native country. On 15 July 2010, he wrote in the Irish Times, "There seems to be a deep sepulchral gloom about in Ireland, especially in the media, where the worst traits of negativity are flourishing." He added, "There is no percentage in wallowing in the 'whatshuddabeens' of the recent past. Ireland needs to take a leaf from the American playbook, where dogged optimism, despite all the recent setbacks, remains a defining trait." O'Dowd focused on a new plan by the Irish government to build the country into a "silicon republic" by emphasizing major investment in research and development based on a theory that this initiative would generate global investment, and thus create jobs, because of Ireland's reputation for top-notch education.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Celtic Revival? by Sean Kay Copyright © 2011 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
IntroductionChapter 1: Dublin in the Rare Old Times
Chapter 2: A Tiger's Broken Dreams
Chapter 3: Waiting in the Long Grass
Chapter 4: A Million Small Steps
Chapter 5: A Post-Catholic Ireland
Chapter 6: The Jigsaw Puzzle of Peace
Chapter 7: Éireann Go Global
Chapter 8: Tales from the Promised Land
What People are Saying About This
A book filled, by turns, with illuminating stories and dispassionate analysis, with a sure grasp of Ireland's rapid growth and, now, its economic morass and clouded future. Celtic Revival? is both perceptive and wonderfully readable.
'The Great Country Known as Ireland' was brought low by incompetent bankers, greedy property developers, and short-sighted politicians. Sean Kay is quite persuasive that Ireland will be back. But he also illustrates in many ways that the human cost of this financial disaster is beyond measure. Other peoples should and must learn the hard lessons imposed upon Ireland by its political elite. Read this book and avoid the fate of the Irish—before you too follow in their footsteps.
Sean Kay has done Ireland a service. This eloquent and timely narrative should be obligatory reading for those that bankrupted and betrayed my generation. This book is also about hope. The foundations for the renewal of the Irish Republic have now been written. Thank you.