Sir, - The sudden advent of national prosperity has caught us by surprise and we are not quite sure how we should feel about it. To judge by what we read and hear, what we should feel is unhappy. The general tone of media comment suggests that we are a corrupt, greedy, hypocritical, materialistic and selfish lot and we do not deserve to be doing as well as we are.
Change has come to Ireland so quickly that we have not had the chance to adjust to it gradually. The scandals in the Church, in the business world and in politics have somehow become intertwined in people's minds with the new prosperity - as if the one were caused by the other. The old certainties are gone but no new ones have taken their place.
Clearly we cannot be what we were a decade ago - not to mind six decades ago. The distance between de Valera's homely vision of an idealised, unchanging, rural Ireland and the Ireland of today is immense.
We cannot go back to that world - nor do we not want to. We are now grown up and we have to find our own path through the quicksand of moral uncertainties which is characteristic of developed economies. But we are still the same people we always were - no better and no worse than anyone else. Laying about with generalised criticism is not helpful. It is time we turned our minds to considering what kind of Ireland we want in this 21st century. The sooner that debate begins the better. - Yours, etc.,
Joyce Andrews, Goatstown Road, Dublin 14.