Where were you in 1980?

Twenty years ago the economy was reeling under the depredation of Fianna Fail's 1977 election manifesto. The public finances were in a shambles. Public spending was out of control. Inflation was accelerating. The Irish pound was about to go into free-fall against sterling and a steady decline against the other currencies of the EMS. Unemployment was rising, and tens of thousands of young people were leaving the country each year. Out in Kinsealy - financed, it now seems, by a bevy of financial fairy godmothers - C.J. Haughey was plotting to overthrow Jack Lynch. In the North, the IRA was busy slaughtering those who did not aspire to extending the sovereignty of the South to cover Hibernia Irredenta.

Among those leaving this happy island state, was one Michael O'Loughlin, whose opinions, proffered now as a returned emigrant, were carried on these pages recently. And who could blame him for leaving Ireland back then?

Who could blame him for pursuing his life's goals abroad over the following decade? The late 1970s and most of the 1980s were the anni horribiles of Ireland, the years in which the country was misgoverned and opportunities were squandered in a way we had not seen since the 1950s. It was the decade in which we saw C.J.H. plunge us into a fiscal crisis, saw him attacking the Anglo-Irish Agreement while the FG/Labour Coalition irresolutely muddled around rather than get the economy back on the path to economic growth. The "misery index", the sum of the inflation rate and the unemployment rate reached levels never seen before or since. Poverty increased; taxes increased; the debt burden soared; the economy stagnated; political life was dominated by the dialogue of the deaf on the issues of abortion and divorce. It was a bloody awful time to be young, or even middle-aged. Unlike Michael O'Loughlin, I know what it was like: I lived here for most of the time he was away. So, I am not amused when, 20 years later, the storm safely past, an older - but not, I suggest, a wiser - Michael O'Loughlin, having arrived back in Ireland, offers us his considered views as to the appalling state of the country, materially and spiritually, in which we are selfishly wallowing today, and takes us to task for our collective failure to build a better society than the one in which we live.

His eloquent rant in these pages a couple of weeks ago was long on style, short on fact; long on opinion, short on evidence to support it. I searched the piece carefully for falsifiable statements (as opposed to opinions). As far as I could see, the only incidences of such statements were the following: (1) an assertion that we are seeing the arrival of a massive housing crisis which requires radical action by a government unwilling to act; (2) an assertion that the pubs aren't what they were 20 years ago; (3) an observation that the ownership level of four-wheel drive vehicles by south-Dublin dyed blondes is somewhat higher than in cities such as Caracas; (4) an assertion that there is a lot of hype about Irish films and pop-singers in the Irish media; (5) an assertion that the said pop-singers and allied trades have an unhealthy interest in making money, which is symptomatic of Ireland in the 1990s; (6) there is a lot of litter in the streets, which is a metaphor for our spiritual decline.

Let's look at these assertions and complaints. First, there is no housing crisis, nor is one likely. The demand for housing has been rising more rapidly than the supply, a result of the growth in the number of people able to afford to get into the housing market. House prices are high because people can afford to pay those prices, not because they can't. Housing is as affordable now as it was 20 years ago - check the facts in the Bacon report. Housing supply is reacting, with a lag, and Government actions are likely to result in a levelling off in prices over the next year or so. What O'Loughlin sees as a damning crisis is merely the consequence of rapid growth, of successful economic policies introduced and prosecuted while he was out of the country a decade ago. I have no idea how many jeeps are driven by blondes in Caracas, and I don't care. But I find it patronising for a writer to criticise people who use their own money to buy the goods they want to consume just because it appears nouveau riche to him.

It appears the same to me, but it is their money, and I suggest he should accept the maxim, de gustibus non est disputandum. Yes, the pubs have deteriorated - because pub numbers are (more or less) fixed while pub users are more numerous. So what? The licensing policy may be mad, but that is not an indication of the country's moral decline. Emptier, more traditional pubs, as remembered by Michael O'Loughlin, reflect a time when fewer people were able to go out to enjoy themselves. It that what we should be looking for?

As for the hype, and the commercial criteria for "artists", Ireland is the same as Britain, or France, or Germany, or the US in this respect. Check out the Oscars, Michael, if you want an example of insular artistic hype. And as far as the "bottom line" goes, it is a 20th century conceit that good art is unconnected with the willingness of people to pay for it. Check out the Renaissance, Michael: Shakespeare wrote plays to make money. Finally, the litter. Yes, the streets are dirty, and the level of dirt is higher here than elsewhere. But it seems to me that (a) the streets were pretty dirty back in the 1970s; (b) the litter problem is connected to economic growth rather than spiritual decline; and (c) is being tackled. So where does all this leave Rip Van Winkle, appalled by the state of the country which he now graces with his presence?

His is a classic example of laudator temporis acti se puero. It is also a classic case of artistic envy. Things weren't good 20 years ago, and are immeasurably better today. Higher living standards, reduced poverty, increased educational opportunity are, I believe, facts, and facts to be welcomed as evidence of a society getting it right, not a society losing sight of where it is going. Religious practice (but maybe not belief) is declining, but my experience of young people suggests their sense of morality is higher than it was a generation ago - witness the growth in environmental concern. The roads are crowded, but that means more people are better off. Great.

O'Loughlin's real problem lies in his admission that he is "still looking for the values he can share with his fellow countrymen". His own values, it seems, are what he describes as "the public realm . . . that republic which is a realm of communal values which go beyond the traditional Irish recipe of simple nationalism mixed with economic self-interest". Now, I have no direct evidence as to what constitutes that realm, but it sounds awfully like a whinge that the Irish haven't fallen for the wiles of socialism. This is, of course, a recurrent theme among artists of a certain intellectual hauteur and finds a receptive audience among those who commission articles for this newspaper.