A chara, - After spending a year abroad I have come back to Dublin for a holiday. Things have certainly changed quickly. Dublin appears to be a lively, prosperous and confident city whose boom has reached even higher levels since I left. But it quickly becomes clear that these are only superficial trimmings. The truth is that our modernity is a thin veneer, and the smugness which abounds about the Tiger is badly misplaced.
The hysterical xenophobia arising from the minute trickle of refugees from abroad reveals the sad truth about 1990s Ireland: a backward and paranoid place, a nation of selfish children who want all the privileges of prosperity and the modern world with none of the responsibilities.
Let no-one invoke Nobel prizes, Riverdance, film directors or computer entrepreneurs. We are neither modern, outward-looking nor confident. We are incapable of dealing maturely with the realities of our own success, of these global times or with modern diversity. We remain in the gloomy and inward-looking mentality of the 1950s and continue to heap shame upon ourselves. - Is mise,
Barry Mc CREA,
Princeton University,
NJ-08544 USA.