A Celtic tiger is born

I first arrived in Dublin in 1983. I came from a country which claimed to have the best education system in the world. Scotland boasted a particularly large contribution to intellectual and scientific history. It was a country with the best whisky, salmon and scenery.

I arrived in an Ireland that claimed all those accolades for itself, and few more. Scotland boasted 20 US presidents, The Irish 21.

Yet despite the similarity between the two nations, Scotland was largely unknown to the Irish. It existed only in the southern Irish mentality as a stereotype of kilted meanness. I was puzzled that a small Celtic nation so burdened with its own negative stereotypes took such a lazy view of its near neighbour.

Yet what Ireland had was its own status, a history of struggle which had delivered a government. I arrived in an Ireland which had only itself to blame for its society and politics, and seemed to feel that burden keenly. The hot issue was emigration. Everybody talked about how something had failed but few were prepared to point the finger.

Scotland still blamed England. Despite its huge role in the empire, Scots had shifted the blame for that on their southern neighbours, along with the blame for their decimated industrial economy. In Scotland, people still sang sentimental songs and drunkenly proclaimed the historic achievements of the past, hoping the noise might drown out the failure of the present.

It is with incredulity, then envy, that Scots have watched Ireland's recent success. A traditional Scotland felt resentment in its old Protestant bones that the ramshakle Catholic neighbour should dare to be this good. But that old Scotland was dying too, to be replaced by one which admired Ireland, and desperately wanted to copy it.

What is striking about Ireland now is that the finger of blame barely keeps still. Iconic politicians fall one day, to be followed a church leaders the next. The resigned sense of failure of the 1980s is vanished; an entrepreneurial dynamism has taken its place.

There was book entitled The Begrudger's Guide to Ireland. It was stated that the Irish would always begrudge success, as if this was part of their genetic make-up. Such a view looks ridiculous now.

As Ireland has changed, so Scotland has moved on. A nation dominated by the conservative party, the Protestant church and the heroic mythology of ship-building and coal-mining has now become a more realistic place. Where once a list of Scottish inventors would trip off the sentimentalist's tongue, now it is a consultant listing the size and achievements of Scotland's IT industry or latest bio-technology patent.

Crucially, 20 years ago Scots didn't have the spine to vote in number for the devolved parliament then offered. This time round they delivered an 80 per cent approval of the idea. Scots are now prepared to know themselves, and not hide in the past.

But what they see still causes doubt. If modern Ireland is the swaggering boxer commanding the ring, all sharp upper cuts and flashing footwork, Scotland is still unsure if approves of physical contact. Though confidence in her identity has surged over the last twenty years, accompanied by world-class art, literature and film-making, she still hangs by the ropes looking for approval.

This seems typical of the difference between the two nations. Both are fabulously verbal and argumentative, but in completely different ways. Scots cut their definitions from stone, and will fight for precision, while there seems greater fluidity behind Irish words, a trust that an argument will not be won by one wave, but by the entire current.

Scots are slow to make friends: they are cautious. They construct worlds of personal morality and principle that will daily inform their actions, and slowly box them in and close off their options. Yet they yearn for a freer existence.

Part of the cultural renaissance of the last twenty years has been a boom in Ceilidhs. The wild dancing and insistent rhythm of the Highland music allows southern Scots to simultaneously feel that they are doing something "Scottish" but fun, as if the two were often exclusive.

In contrast the Irish are infinitely more confident. I have a barrister friend who once said the only reason she was polite to American tourists in the 1980's was because she felt they'd been duped in coming to Ireland. Now Dublin exudes a strutting assuredness more like London in 1986, when the Big Bang had showered everyone in cash.

Questions of national identity seem to have receded, as wealth has brought the realisation that only insecure nations worry how they appear. Yet now I am struck not by a new liberalism, but an economic conservatism. Ireland's wealth seems to have arrived with pretensions. Somehow it's not going to everyone, and doesn't particularly want to.

I used to think I knew Ireland. I now think it is a profoundly foreign place. I think this is because I cannot share in the sense of relief that the burden of war and struggle has finally be lifted, that it no longer matters if you do or do not emigrate. The real luxury won by Ireland is the luxury to think in selfish terms, where once economics and history insisted you weigh your actions against the judgement of others.

I envy it all. The self-determination, the lows and the highs. It is the mark of what real nations do. A cultural event which always amazed me were the Debs balls, when every lad with spots and every puppy-fatted girl would dress like low-rent starlets and dance till two. Scotland has finally got round to going to the Debs, while Ireland seems to be enjoying an extended lock-in. The two nations do share a lot, and most it accompanied by alcohol, but while the Scots still use the alcohol to escape, the Irish use it to celebrate.

Scotland's new parliament is a sign that she is finally waking up to the fact that if she doesn't do something about her future, then nobody will. And a Scotland resurgent could give even a Celtic Tiger a scrap for its money.