One in every of my trip habits is to take alongside a e-book in regards to the place I’m visiting — which is how I discovered myself on Eire’s spectacular Atlantic coast final month, paging via a replica of Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Private Historical past of Trendy Eire. O’Toole, a outstanding 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 not too long ago been a poor place by European requirements, I hadn’t realized simply how poor. Inside dwelling reminiscence, as O’Toole writes, Eire was “an unlimited cattle ranch with just a few cities.” Two-thirds of properties nonetheless had no electrical energy after World Warfare II, and, as late as 1961, most rural homes lacked indoor bathrooms or scorching water. In 1961, Eire’s inhabitants was simply 2.8 million, the nadir after a long time of decline going again to the Nineteenth century.
But the nation I visited had turn into some of the 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 excellent, but it surely has turn into one thing few may have predicted when O’Toole was born in 1958.
One in every of my objectives at Good Information is to counter our constructed‑in bias towards unhealthy headlines by spotlighting the sluggish, compounding enchancment over time that’s too typically 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 revenue (GNI) per particular person — what people truly 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 big quantities of overseas 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 income to Eire, partly for tax causes; modified GNI strips that out, higher reflecting what Irish households and companies truly earn.)
From brief 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 right this moment 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. Virtually each Irish little one now will get the prospect to dwell an extended and wholesome life.
From mass emigration to web immigration
Then: Emigration has all the time been a part of the Irish story, as Irish-Individuals like myself know effectively. But it surely wasn’t only a Nineteenth-century phenomenon. Nicely 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 % of the nation left.
Now: The state of affairs has largely reversed, with roughly 12 % of the nation’s residents now non-Irish residents as of 2022. The place as soon as Eire’s biggest export was the Irish, right this moment it’s turn into a spot that pulls capital, concepts, and other people.
From dropouts to school graduates
Then: Into the mid‑Nineteen Fifties, O’Toole writes, information suggests greater than 80 % of pupils left college at age 14, partly as a result of secondary schooling charged charges most households couldn’t afford. However that started to alter in 1966 when the Irish authorities determined to make secondary schooling free for all. For the technology of Irish youngsters like O’Toole, whose father was an unskilled handbook laborer, the chance was life-changing.
Now: By some requirements, Eire can declare to be essentially the most educated nation on this planet, with greater than half its inhabitants between the ages of 25 to 64 holding a bachelor’s diploma or increased.
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 preserve authorities jobs in the event that they bought 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 better than its financial ones. Greater than 60 % 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 — turned Eire’s taoiseach, or prime minister.
Then: Northern Eire was engulfed in three a long time 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 every day life and straining each economies.
Now: Because the 1998 Good Friday Settlement, formally recorded crimes have fallen steeply — 2024–’25 noticed simply 95,968 offenses in Northern Eire, the second-lowest stage 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 international recession, which hammered the Irish economic system and led to widespread struggling. However even then, Eire proved way 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 towards the long-term file of human progress. Eire’s story, with all its detours and its new issues right this moment, like a critical housing disaster, is a case research in precisely that.
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