The year ahead is an important one for Ireland. It marks a transition from a prolonged phase of sustained economic and social progress to a period of slower growth in employment and living standards. This transition will be difficult, as Irish society seeks to come to terms with life in a slower lane.
Whatever challenges lie ahead, they will be faced by a country that has been utterly transformed in the past two decades. For Ireland is a richer, ruder, bigger, brasher and ultimately better country than it was in the late 1980s. Over the past two decades, the Irish economy has tripled in size, using the measuring rod of real Gross Domestic Product. During the same period, the number of people at work has risen by one million to 2.1 million. Economic growth and employment expansion have been the twin pillars supporting social change.
The most important social change of the past two decades has been the ending of involuntary emigration. Families are no longer sundered by the search for work abroad. Jobs paying decent wages have been available at home to almost all who want them. As a result, to a greater extent than ever before, Irish people have been able to live and work, marry and raise families, retire and grow old in their country of birth. The consequence has been a steep rise in population. On the eve of the economic boom, the 1991 census showed 3.5 million people living in Ireland. By April 2007, the population had risen to 4.3 million, an increase of more than 800,000 or 23 per cent in the space of 16 years. Ireland's population is now at its highest level since 1861.
Domestic population growth - births minus deaths - and net immigration have contributed almost equally to the rise in the number of Irish residents. Between 1991 and 2007, net immigration into Ireland exceeded 400,000. The large inflow of immigrants is to be welcomed. They have filled vacant jobs, brought scarce skills and contributed by their labours to Irish economic and social development. They have also widened the culture, injecting a new cosmopolitanism into Irish life.
The steep population rise has, quite literally, changed the face of Ireland. Urban sprawl, the suburbanisation of the countryside, new motorways congested with rising numbers of cars, increasing levels of noise and pollution are part of the price exacted. However, these should be addressed by better and more transparent physical planning and tighter environmental controls, rather than by seeking to restrict population growth. For, in terms of European population density, Ireland remains a relatively empty country and a rising population is ultimately a signal of economic and social wellbeing.
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In the sphere of education, the resources released by the boom have allowed for a major expansion of higher education in Ireland. By 2004/2005, there were 144,000 students attending third-level institutions, twice as many as in 1990/91. This exceptional expansion is providing a solid foundation of skills and knowledge on which future economic and social progress can be constructed. Enhanced access to higher education is also promoting social mobility and acting as a catalyst for social change.
Acting in concert, the employment boom and the education revolution of recent times have changed, in a fundamental sense, the role of women in Irish society. Women have moved out of the home and into the workforce in very large numbers during the boom years. Women now account for well over two out of every five of those at work. By the third quarter of 2007, there were 923,000 women working in paid employment in Ireland. Between 1994 and 2007, the number of women working outside the home more than doubled.
Popular opinion holds that women work part-time and are concentrated in areas of low pay and few prospects. However, recent trends in the labour force are overturning the conventional wisdom. For every woman working in part-time employment, there are two employed full-time. Moreover, proportionately more women than men fill high-status, high income jobs. Recent research by Fás and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that, in 2005, almost two out of every five women at work held professional or associate professional positions or were managers or proprietors of enterprises. Only three out of every 10 men at work held similar positions. The growing success of women in the workforce mirrors their prior achievements in the sphere of education. On the basis of Leaving Certificate results, women are commanding a rising share of the places in prestigious university courses in law, medicine and business studies.
The increasing numbers of women working outside the home have engendered many key social changes - rising ages of marriage, smaller families and much richer dual-income households. It has also created new stresses in terms of household organisation, the cost and availability of childcare and additional commuting time. However, even in the face of these new stresses and strains, increased access to employment has allowed many more women to gain financial freedom. And this freedom is highly-prized. A recent survey published in this newspaper found that financial independence is the most important issue in the lives of women in Ireland today, with 65 per cent of women surveyed ranking it as a very important issue in their lives.
For four out of every five members of the population, the years of high growth have made Ireland a better place in which to live. The boom, however, has not lifted all boats. Too many are still trapped in consistent poverty and too many more remain economically vulnerable. Their needs must be accorded primacy as a gathering storm darkens the economic horizon.