Ireland has changed an awful lot in recent years, much to the bafflement of friends and colleagues around Europe who have witnessed the rapid changes to the place in the last 10 years.
Some people think it has not changed for the best. Just the other night I met with some old friends that I was in college with years ago and one of them was lamenting the way things have changed in Ireland. He was pretty wound up about it and his view would be pretty common around the place these days.
Ireland has become a lot more obsessed with wealth and materialism, largely fueled by a boom in property values. Tie this in with the obsession of the Irish to own property and a net inward flow of people to take up newly-created jobs in a shopping-mad population and you have a powerful source of new money, showy materialism and a generally more-selfish attitude to society and what it means to be Irish. Of course this particularly affects Dublin, the capital city and source of much of this property-fueled wealth generation, but its effects have spread to most other parts of the country.
2007 brought all this to a shuddering halt, due to a downturn in the property market, high profile scandals, lousy performances in things we used to be great at, all leaving people disappointed and confused.
The short film below should explain the change better than I can.
Some people think it has not changed for the best. Just the other night I met with some old friends that I was in college with years ago and one of them was lamenting the way things have changed in Ireland. He was pretty wound up about it and his view would be pretty common around the place these days.
Ireland has become a lot more obsessed with wealth and materialism, largely fueled by a boom in property values. Tie this in with the obsession of the Irish to own property and a net inward flow of people to take up newly-created jobs in a shopping-mad population and you have a powerful source of new money, showy materialism and a generally more-selfish attitude to society and what it means to be Irish. Of course this particularly affects Dublin, the capital city and source of much of this property-fueled wealth generation, but its effects have spread to most other parts of the country.
2007 brought all this to a shuddering halt, due to a downturn in the property market, high profile scandals, lousy performances in things we used to be great at, all leaving people disappointed and confused.
The short film below should explain the change better than I can.
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