Let's look at some of the problems in today's Celtic Tiger Ireland. People are expected to work harder than ever before, to spend much longer time travelling between home and work in stressful conditions, to encounter much greater delays in travelling at weekends, and to queue for many services where the word service is at best an exaggeration.

Although the majority of people are certainly better off than they were five years ago, and emigration and unemployment have virtually disappeared, people on low or middle incomes become more than a little frustrated when they read in our newspapers of meals for two at only £160.

There are also strains at an institutional level. We are living with an infrastructure at least 10 years behind current needs.

Housing and general industrial development has been hindered not only by the long drawn-out planning process, but also the reduction in the number of apprentices recruited by the construction industry during the depressed years of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Public transport has suffered from many of the same difficulties as general infrastructural investment, with the added problem of having the State control all major capital expenditure. As a result, investment decisions in the last 40 years were made with little consideration of the true business needs of these companies. The problems are in all areas of public transport, with the railways and Dublin Airport being the most extreme examples.

While the change from emigration to immigration and the reduction in unemployment met the skills need in the first couple of years of the boom, continuing demand and the resultant shortfall of skilled personnel has become another potential brake on future economic growth.

In the critical engineering sector, this problem is compounded by a reducing percentage of students taking engineering at all course levels in Ireland. The percentage of secondary school students studying honours maths, physics and chemistry is declining while, at third level, business studies are attracting a growing number of students, to the detriment particularly of engineering.

Over the past five years we have had all the major economic conditions in our favour, in particular a strong US economy, with significant resultant US multinational investment in Ireland, and a weak euro making our exports price-competitive.

Irish inflation can run at a higher rate than our global competitors only while these conditions persist. In the longer term our global competitiveness can only be retained by increasing productivity.

While wealth is a measure of success, Ireland will rapidly become a divided society if it is the only measure. Leaders in politics, industry, education and the media carry a major responsibility for ensuring that people at all levels in the private and public sectors get the recognition that their efforts deserve. Wider share ownership in the private sector, more innovative reward systems in the public sector, and a far greater emphasis on training, skills and professional development are some of the key strategies that are required.

The National Development Plan linked to EU-funded projects has set the framework for infrastructure development for the next six to 10 years. There are unfortunately no quick solutions in this area, but there is clear evidence that the planning, design, consultation, regulation, tendering and construction of these projects take much longer than equivalent scale projects in private industry.

Whereas local democracy is an important part of the Irish system, the success of the National Roads Authority shows that in areas like waste management, housing and related infrastructure, national authorities and cross-boundary alliances may be needed to expedite development. Greater emphasis on regional development, particularly in the area of telecommunications, could help reduce the pressure on the infrastructure in the greater Dublin area.

Measures to increase the number of skilled personnel include the wider promotion of engineering as a career; the need to review aspects of second- and third-level education; and the need for a different approach to recruiting and training skilled personnel by private and public employers.

In all aspects of Irish industry and in the public sector, we can also sustain growth, and reduce the impact of any global downturn, if we increase our focus and commitment to customer service. It is far easier to retain the business of existing customers than to fight to retrieve lost business. The tourist industry shows this to dramatic effect.

In a period of limited supply of skilled labour, it is vital that there is increased investment in capital equipment and technology in order to improve personnel utilisation and increase productivity.

The best use of current profits to ensure longer-term business success is to invest sensibly in R&D. Ireland's indigenous companies are well below their international competitors in investment in this area. Now is also the time to invest in developing new markets to offset any future downturn in existing foreign and domestic markets.

Brian Kearney is vice-president of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland and founder and chairman of Project Management