During a thankfully brief career as a messenger boy for a grocery store in Naas, a long time ago, this reporter learned a lesson about generosity. It was that people who had money never gave tips to messenger boys. The tips always came from people who had very little money.

It was as if there was a law that said that the more we have the less we want to give.

Does this principle apply to the Celtic Tiger today? The evidence suggests that it does.

It is not that we are giving less than ever before - but our giving has certainly not kept pace with our spending on the more enjoyable things of life.

Donations to the Society of St Vincent de Paul totalled £12.4 million in 1997 and have been going up slightly each year - about 1 per cent annually for the church gate collection, for instance, according to Liam O'Dwyer.

This contrasts sharply with changes in other forms of spending. For instance, spending on the National Lottery almost doubled from £168.5 million in 1990 to £324.3 million last year.

O'Dwyer is not complaining - he is happy that giving is rising, even slightly, instead of falling. What of our willingness to give time, through volunteering? The Agency for Personal Services Overseas has not noticed any drop in the numbers of people volunteering to do development work in poor countries.

Last year it funded 1,393 people compared with 1,396 a year earlier and 1,266 in 1995.

What has changed, according to Laura O'Mahoney of APSO, is that people with qualifications in computer science, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and certain other disciplines are increasingly difficult to get. With little or no gap between qualifying and getting a job, there is less incentive for people with these skills to go to a developing country to work for a relatively small income.

The picture of a static level of giving at a time when the economy is advancing rapidly is reflected in research into charitable giving conducted at the National College of Ireland (formerly the National College of Industrial Relations). Between 1992 and 1994 there was very little change in giving, researchers found. Later this year it expects to publish a study bringing the figures up to date.

The Disability Federation of Ireland represents a wide range of voluntary bodies all over the country. "My instinct is that there has been no enormous decrease but no substantial increase either," says DFI's director, Roger Acton. But he believes the success of the National Lottery has created a taste for big money prizes which many charitable organisations cannot provide. "While people are happy to give, they like to get something back."

And he asks two questions which might give voluntary organisations and charities a few sleepless nights, depending on the answers:

"Are the people who are giving now the same people who were giving before?" he wonders.

"As they are dying off, are young people taking it up?"