WE BECOME OLD MONEY: Says Gerard O'Neill, economist at Amárach Consulting: "What we have here is a measure of the value of homes over the next 20 years. That value is going to grow.
"We have a generation that will inherit very valuable houses from their parents. Nine in 10 people over 65 own their homes and have no mortgage. Assuming that prices grow steadily and, knowing the mortality rate, we can predict that inheritance will average €5 billion per annum over the next 10 years. And Ireland as a society will go from being the nouveau riche of Europe to an old-money society."
2. THE AGEING OF IRELAND
We're getting older. The percentage of the population over 65 will increase from 2006, and even more sharply after 2011. By 2035 over-50s will make up the majority of the voting population, giving them huge influence on how the country is run. In his vision of the future on page 10, Fintan O'Toole predicts that in 2025, there will be just three workers for every retiree (up from five in 2000). This will put huge pressure on public services and on the working people who support retired relatives, not to mention the retirees themselves.
3. GLOBESITY
The worldwide epidemic of "globesity", often defined as "a woman frowning at her bathroom scale in St Louis, a man whose pants are suddenly too tight in Jakarta, and a roly-poly child playing under a tree in Cairo" is all part of a 1.1 billion-person trend. In the Gardens section, in "How Will Your Garden Grow?", Jane Powers makes the prediction that the garden furniture of the future will have to be larger than that we sit in now, to accommodate our expanded posteriors
4. LOCAL WARMING
In the Gardens section, meteorologist Brendan McWilliams writes that in Ireland in 2025 our average annual temperature could be a full degree higher than in 2000. Lengthy interludes of warm, sunny weather would become a regular feature, but we would have inadequate summer rainfall, and regular water shortages. Our current favourite sun spots, such as France and Spain, could become unbearably hot in summer, and many more Irish people would holiday at home.
5. OIL SHORTAGES
In his 2004 book, Oil - Anatomy of an industry, Matthew Yeomans writes: "The US Department of Energy projects that world oil demand will increase from 78 million barrels a day in 2002 to 118 million barrels a day in 2025. Most of the growth will come from the rapidly expanding nations of the developing world, notably China. But when world oil reserves reach the point of peak production [around 2010 according to the graph above], the price of oil will start a slow but continuous rise and the global economy will feel the strain."