Ireland has a cultural moment, from rock to books to cinema

DUBLIN – From Sally Rooney’s bestsellers to actor Paul Mescal, Ireland, which holds a general election on Nov 29, has been enjoying a cultural and creative renaissance.

In the past few weeks, it has been hard to miss Rooney’s fourth novel Intermezzo (2024), the recent Grammy nomination of rockers Fontaines D.C. or Mescal’s muscles on posters and trailers for Gladiator II, which is in theatres now.

“We’re having a cultural moment and there’s a lot of energy around Irishness at the moment,” said Dr Ruth Barton, professor of film studies at Trinity College Dublin.

The phenomenal global success of the 2020 television adaptation of Rooney’s Normal People, which introduced Mescal to the world, has played a key role.

Dr Christopher Morash, the Seamus Heaney professor of Irish writing at Trinity, said: “There’s a new wave of Irish writers, novelists – particularly women – who came up with books on experiences that were not articulated before.”

Irish writers, musicians and film-makers have been praised for their humour and being down-to-earth.

Ms Maureen Kennelly, director of the Arts Council of Ireland, said: “The profile, internationally in particular, of Irish artists across all art forms has never been higher.”

That has led to cross-cultural cooperation – for example, with Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy starring in the 2024 adaptation of Irish author Claire Keegan’s bestseller Small Things Like These (2021) and Fontaines D.C. providing the soundtrack to Andrea Arnold’s film Bird (2024).

It also starred Dubliner and Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan (The Banshees Of Inisherin, 2022).

Dr Barton said the presence of multinational tech giants such as Meta and Apple in Ireland – due to low corporate taxes – has helped.

“The country has more money than it used to have,” she added. “We’re fundamentally a rich country and we have spent a lot of money on culture.”

The Arts Council’s budget has jumped since 2019. Trinity’s drama academy, The Lir, has become a hotbed of talent.

The country has even launched a trial minimum income for artists, which the main political parties have promised to continue.

“I think the country has always defined itself through its culture, particularly its writers and poets,” said Dr Barton, pointing to world-renowned Irish writers James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

For Ms Kennelly, periods of cultural booms have coincided with “seismic shifts” in society, with the most recent being the final years of the three decades of sectarian violence over British rule in Northern Ireland.

That brought the likes of bands U2 and The Cranberries to the global stage.

More recently, the approval of same-sex marriage in 2015 and the legalisation of abortion in 2018 have transformed Ireland’s image from conservative to progressive.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a sense of Irish society increasingly freeing itself from the affects of the Roman Catholic Church,” said Ms Kennelly.

Dr Morash likened Ireland’s outsized cultural influence to that of South Korea, where K-pop has become its biggest global export.

“You had a country that was an agricultural one that turned into a pop culture hub,” he added.

Now Ireland is “cool” overseas because of a new generation of actors. Mescal and Murphy are household names alongside Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird, 2017), Andrew Scott (Fleabag, 2016 to 2019) and Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, 2020 to present).

Murphy, who hails from Cork in Ireland’s deep south, spoke of his pride in his country in his acceptance speech for the best actor Oscar for Oppenheimer (2023) in March, ending with a heartfelt thank you – in the Irish language.

The unexpected success of docu-fiction Kneecap (2024), about three Belfast upstarts who rap in the ancient language, also marks the beginning of a new turn towards the Irish language “as a kind of medium of cultural expression”, said Dr Barton.

The film has been named in 14 categories in the British Independent Film Awards in December and selected to represent Ireland in the foreign language category at the 2025 Oscars. AFP