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Ireland is rich. That does not mean it’s happy
There are the same dark subplots here that have made the position of other incumbent governments so precarious.
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Ireland, long one of the poorest coutries in Western Europe, now has an abundance of public and private wealth.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Fintan O’Toole
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Ireland’s current condition might best be described as an embarrassment of riches. A country that was long one of the poorest in Western Europe now has an abundance of public and private wealth and an economy that is open to the world.
It has even proved relatively resistant to the temptation of the far right that has proved so appealing elsewhere; perhaps nostalgia for an imagined golden age does not hold much appeal when memories of poverty, mass emigration and the repression imposed by conservative Catholicism are so fresh in the minds of a well-educated, socially liberal population.
