As I sat in the Round Room of the Mansion House last Friday night my mind wandered. It may have been the glass of wine, the historic setting, or the repetition of the award giving – who knows? Winner after winner stepped up to receive their hard-earned prizes. Best food and drink exporter. Best life sciences exporter. Best services exporter. Thriving, innovative firms with global impact. This from a country once best known for exporting its people.

In 1919, Europe lay in ruins. At home, colonial misrule had denied most people a fair chance in life. Those that could, emigrated, sending what they could to help those left behind. Despite such a bleak outlook, people came together in that Round Room 103 years ago with a vision for change. They held the first Dáil and a new country was in the making. They resolved to take a step into the unknown. To build something new. The road was windy and there was often disagreement about which direction to take. But in a century that saw the rise of both fascism and communism, Ireland lurched to neither extreme. In many parts of the world the oppressive rule of empire gave way to exploitive homegrown dictatorship. But Ireland was different. Our fledgling democracy, flawed as it was, slowly – and then quickly – took flight.

WARNING: some statistics ahead – 1910s Ireland vs. Ireland now.* In the 1910s, the number of babies that died in their first year was 20 times higher than today. Life expectancy at birth was 55 years, compared to 82 today. One in 12 people were illiterate and average daily attendance at primary school was 70 percent. Children in rural areas were not even required to attend school. About 1,400 people took the equivalent of the leaving certificate exam, compared to 55,000 today. More than one in three homes were one-room tenements. Half of workers were on the farm (five percent today), and one in ten workers was a domestic servant. Almost all household expenditure (87 percent) was on food, clothing, rent, fuel and light. In 2011, that figure was 27 percent.

We have a tendency to romanticise the past. Particularly when it’s a past that we can’t possibly remember. TV shows like Downton Abbey or Bridgerton, with their palatial homes and high fashion, make bygone eras seem luxurious. We’re slow to realise that if we were around back then, we’d likely be the servants. Many folk songs conflate simpler times of the past with less misery.

Some of those assembled in 1919 looked back to simpler times in search of solutions too.^† Others looked to industrial America and elsewhere. They wondered whether conditions in a free Ireland could ever improve. But could anyone among them have imagined the extent of Ireland’s change in a single century? In 2021 Ireland’s goods and services exports amounted to €451bn. Per capita, Ireland is one of the biggest exporters in the world. That success isn’t down to striking oil in Tipperary or panning for gold in the Shannon. It was hard won.

I don’t write this as some romantic back-slapping exercise (if back-slapping can ever be romantic?!). Independent Ireland’s performance in its first fifty years was dismal. Many generations were cast aside by pig-headed economic policy. Our social policy, until recent years, can at best be described as small-minded. All that made the country an unwelcoming home for many. Today, to our great shame, many are unable to find a home, access timely medical treatment, or even stay warm. Children are becoming adults in temporary accommodation. None of this is good enough.

But that is why I wrote this – as a reminder to myself, as much as anyone – that Ireland is a project. A project that will never be complete. A project that will never and should never be good enough. We should be impatient. We should demand a solution to homelessness. We have a duty to build a truly national health service. Nobody should go cold in wintertime.

But our failures should not stop us from celebrating our successes. In 100 years, a poor, agrarian backwater was utterly transformed to the country we know today. Most of that transformation happened in the last 50 or even 30 years. For me, there’s hope in that success story, built on hard work and ingenuity.

Where can hope, hard work, and ingenuity take us in the next fifty years of this essential project? We have the means. What we need is the ambition and resolve shown in that Round Room 103 years ago. If little old Ireland can become a world-beating exporter, I’m hopeful we can do better at home too.

CN

* Sources: Irish Government, CSO, and the World Bank.

^† Éamon De Valera’s social conservatism and protectionist views, for example.