I've been putting off reaading The Pope's Children: Ireland's New Elite, the book by TV show host and SBP columnist David McWilliams, for quite a while, after I bought it at Christmas, fearing that it would be too twee to read about his archetypal characters "Low GI Jane", "Bouncy Castle Brendan" and friends without gagging.
However, it's an entertaining and zippy read, which gathers a wealth of statistical and anecdotal data into a very readable narrative. McWilliams, who was a central bank economist and an investment banker in London before becoming a journalist, makes a lot of interesting points. He's hugely bearish on the Irish housing market, which is now looking a bit more prescient, describing it as being driven by a huge German savings surplus translating into low Eurozone interest rates. This may now soon be coming to an end, as his editor, Cliff Taylor, writes in the current Sunday Business Post. Brian Cowen must be hoping that he can get the general election out of the way before the situation deteriorates much further.
McWilliams thinks, and I'd agree, that globalisation has had the unexpected effect of making the Irish cling more tightly to their traditions, even as they abandon much of the real committment to the Irish language, the Catholic church, family values or a preference for rural life for a more moderate, somewhat vague, and non-judgemental set of attitudes. Last weekend's rugby international, the first time that England has played at Croke Park, the scene of the original Bloody Sunday massacre during the War of Independence, epitomises this new ease with our place in the world, as the record margin of the Irish victory chimes with our self-confidence.
The book would need to be edited for a foreign audience, but if the sales figures are to be believed, the public has taken it to heart as the definitive chronicle of the Celtic Tiger period in Ireland; I would have to agree.
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