DUBLIN, Ireland — Back in 1985, I was in France and decided to take a car ferry to Ireland to visit an old friend, a legendary foreign correspondent, who had a cottage near Cork.
I studied the map and figured out how long I thought it would take to get there, only to discover I had no idea what I was up against. It took nearly three times as long as I expected. Many of the roads were a single lane, which meant if a car or truck was going in the other direction, someone had to get off the road, mostly me.
And if a cow was lying in the road, or a few sheep, well, I had to wait till they were ready to move. Cork itself was a quaintly pleasant town, where a clerk sold me a walking hat to wear in the rain and said she really wanted to join her sons in America.
That was a long time ago, and the Ireland I visited for a week earlier this month was a vastly transformed place, one where the Gross Domestic Product per capita is now higher than that in the United States, and where far more people want to immigrate to, rather than from.
“Prices are going through the roof, you know what I mean,” said Richard Boylan, an entertaining cabbie who, like nearly all cab drivers I met, was not only Irish, but was born in the city where he worked.
Gasoline, always more expensive in Europe, was roughly $8 a gallon when I was there, but I didn’t talk to anyone who dreamed of coming to “the states,” except for one pub server from Mexico.
Ireland gets overlooked much of the time when the world’s economies are being analyzed, which may be a mistake. The nation (not counting the six counties that are still part of the United Kingdom) is physically small– about two-thirds the size of Michigan or Ohio, with about five million, slightly less than half as many as either state.
Yet since the early 1990’s, the Irish economy has taken off, in large part because of government initiatives to reach out to multi-national corporations; relatively low taxes and regulatory rules that businesses can live with. Taxes are higher for the richest people, though this doesn’t seem to have driven many away.
Regardless of the exact cause, Ireland’s economy went on a two-decade expansionist boom that economists called the “Celtic Tiger.” That ended with a thud, however, when the worldwide ‘great recession’ arrived in 2008, hitting Ireland earlier and harder than most countries. But to the surprise of some, Ireland bounced back.
Within a few years, the finance minister of Germany, long seen as the economic anchor of the Euro, admitted that he was jealous at the speed of Ireland’s recovery, and praised it for helping stabilize the common European currency.
The Economist, the respected British newsmagazine, proclaimed in 2015 that Ireland was the world’s best place to live. That may be debatable, but Ireland also does have a social safety net that seems considerably better than ours, especially when it comes to health care; the Irish now live longer, are less obese and have far lower mortality rates for infants and mothers giving birth.
Not everything is perfect; a somewhat higher percentage of Irish smoke than we do; unemployment is consistently higher as well. But the nation is linked, by an affordable network of clean and fast trains, as well as roads.
Ireland has long been scrupulously neutral in anything involving armed conflict, and has never joined NATO. But they seem totally on the side of Ukraine, and far more Ukrainian than Irish flags were visible in Dublin, as are refugees. My first restaurant server had escaped from her village exactly a month earlier.
The Irish have their own unresolved issues; while Ireland has existed for more than a millennium, the Republic of Ireland itself is just a century old, becoming independent of Britain at last after a bitter and bloody Civil War that remains a touchy issue.
For example: If Ireland has a George Washington, it would be Michael Collins, who in the years after the failed Easter Rising of 1916, invented guerrilla warfare, waged a brilliant and successful struggle against the British, while also serving as minister of finance and intelligence and raising funds to keep fighting.
He eventually forced the British to the peace table and headed a delegation to negotiate a peace treaty, after which he had to fight a civil war against many of his own comrades.
If anything, the real Collins was more remarkable than the character portrayed by Liam Neeson in the 1996 movie; he did all that with little formal education, when he was still in his late 20s.
On Aug. 22, 1922, he was assassinated under circumstances that remain mysterious. There was never any formal inquiry into his death. Late last year, a group of historians called for a government investigation into his murder, as happened in America following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But Ireland’s taoiseach (prime minister) immediately vetoed the idea, saying it would be “anathema.” Was he afraid that the truth might once again inflame passions that could tear the country apart?
“You’ll want to come back, of course you will,” Conor O’Connell, an elderly hotel concierge with a brother in Chicago told me.
He was right, of course. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave.
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