A species in soundbites

Irish Society: This is not the first book to observe the Celtic Tiger transformation of Irish society, nor will it be the last; the sheer scale of the changes witnessed in the last 10 years will ensure that commentators and publishers seek to document and sell portraits of the social revolution for many years to come.

As an economist and commentator with a talent for translating economic jargon into interesting and humane journalism, McWilliams is well-equipped to chart the new species of Irish winners - the Pope's Children, born either side of the papal visit in 1979. As one of those children, and a regular reader of McWilliams's newspaper columns, this is a book I expected to engage, stimulate and entertain me, but I finished it somewhat disappointed.

Part of the difficulty lies in the style adopted by McWilliams. The writing is breezy, pugnacious, ribald and often infuriating. It has nothing of the intimacy or sophistication of what I regard as a classic portrait of Celtic Tiger Ireland - Ann Marie Hourihane's She Moves Through the Boom, published in 2001. Hourihane described the new Ireland through simple but revealing stories and vignettes and allowed them to do the work, binding them together with quiet humanity and understatement. In contrast, the constant commentary by McWilliams and his obsession with labels, particularly in the first half of the book, becomes repetitive as he swamps the reader with categories of the new Irish.

"Hold on to your seat," he warns, "for a full-speed drive through the full-on nation".

And what is that nation composed of? Seventy per cent of them are doing well, all pushed into the middle by the availability of credit (Wonderbra economics). They include the Kells Angels (commuters) The Expectocracy (those who believe they can now have anything they want), RoboPaddy ("no place is too far flung to prevent him buying off the plans"), the Autofashionistas (determined to keep ahead of the neighbours), Bouncy Castle Brendan (cashing in on ostentatious communion celebrations), Breakfast Roll Man (lives by convenience stores), and Hiberno- Cosmopolitans (embrace the Tiger but want to retain a semblance of Irish identity). This is only a selection - there are many more categories and sub- categories, and there is always the danger that the reader will end up crushed under the plethora of soundbites.

To his credit, McWilliams has done his research; he trots out fascinating statistics about spending habits, obesity and lavish weddings, and is at his strongest when explaining our obsession with credit and property, the likely consequences, and the money trail controlled by the banks (Bank of Ireland and AIB make more profits per customer than any banks in Europe). He is often funny, irreverent, bitingly accurate and even-handed in the sense that there is a label for everyone in the audience and we are all equally lampooned. This is laudable, but there is no consistency to the tone and style; serious and absorbing digressions on economics are interspersed with a narrative that often seems to be driven by an urgent need to spit out more labels and categories.

The problem is that the portrait of Ireland he paints is at odds with his contention that "the overwhelming positives" of the Celtic Tiger outweigh the "slight negatives". He accepts there is an underclass in Irish society, but it is those who have achieved liberation through credit that he wants to explore. They are a complicated lot, and his comments on the "delicious paradoxes of modern Ireland" are insightful and revealing and will be valuable to historians of the future. The portrait of Ireland is, broadly, an accurate one; we are a fat, drunken, indebted people who are also obsessed with healthcare, and purchasing more. Those who editorialise most frequently about the problems engendered by property obsession - traffic, lack of time spent with family, the rape of the countryside - are the same people who produce "the money-spinning property supplement . . . cheerleading the very suburban estates that create this problem for the editorial writers".

This book should stimulate considerable debate, and will probably invoke a variety of responses, which will be a measure of McWilliams's success in highlighting the various contradictions of modern Ireland. I would have preferred if he had eschewed some of the more unnecessary soundbites and labels, but I suspect McWilliams will be unperturbed by less than effusive reviews, because he has a label for the kind of people who will write them - the Commentariat, who have, allegedly, by focusing almost exclusively on the negatives, "wilfully ignored the facts regarding Irish society and the economy". They are also likely to be (and this is my favourite description) Carrot Juice Contrarians, as represented by Fair Trade Frank who is "a veteran of every protest march since Carnsore Point, smiles wider at black children than white ones for some reason. John Kelly is his touchstone for musical cool. He was in the Green Party, but finds the idea of a leader or even a rotating chairman difficult to digest".

Diarmaid Ferriter lectures in Irish history at St Patrick's College, DCU. His book, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (Profile), is now out in paperback

The Pope’s Children: Ireland’s New Elite By David McWilliams. Gill and Macmillan, 272pp. €22.99