Since 1991 there has been an increase of 670,000 in the number of people between 15 and 64 at work in our State.
(For the purpose of this article I shall exclude the small number of eccentrics like myself who remain at work after 65.)
This 62 per cent increase in the number of people at work within the past 14 years is three times higher than in any other European country, Luxembourg excepted, and is 7½ times greater than that achieved by the rest of western Europe during this period.
That we have succeeded in generating such a huge demand for Irish labour in Ireland is, of course, remarkable, and the factors that created this demand have been much discussed both here and abroad.
That we have been able to find so many additional workers to take these jobs is equally remarkable, yet for some reason this has evoked virtually no discussion anywhere.
The first thing to say is that this huge increase in employment was not influenced by any significant changes in our birth rate during the time when these age cohorts were being born.
In fact, throughout the whole of the past 14 years the Irish-born majority of our 15-64 population has consistently come from age cohorts that involved the birth of about 3.2 million people. And as this has continued to be the case with the most recent 50-year age cohort - those born between 1955 and 2005 - we shall continue for the next 15 years at least to draw upon a similar-sized birth cohort for our labour force.
What has changed greatly, however, in recent times is both the proportion of these 3.2 million Irish-born people who have succeeded in surviving in Ireland to age 64, and the proportion of these survivors who have entered the labour force and got employment.
In these two key respects the experience of those born between 1941 and 1990, who form our present 15-64 age cohort, has been hugely more favourable than that of their predecessors born between 1927 and 1976.
Of the 3.2 million born in the earlier period, only 2 million were alive and living in Ireland in 1991: three out of eight of that generation had died young or emigrated.
There was a particularly high rate of attrition amongst the oldest elements of that age cohort: those who were born in the late 1920s or in the 1930s.
This was because at the start of their lives they had experienced both a very high rate of infant mortality that prevailed in Ireland until well after the second World War, and in their teens and 20s they suffered the ravages of TB which was not finally brought under control until the 1960s.
But even more significant was that two out of five of those who survived these health hazards had to emigrate to find employment.
In fact it was not until the 1960s that a generation came of age of which more than half survived in Ireland beyond the age of 35.
By 1991, to the 2 million survivors of that 1927-1976 group had been added about 175,000 people not born in Ireland - over one-quarter of whom were children who had been born outside Ireland to Irish emigrants returning to work here during the 1970s.
By contrast, today's 2005 working population forms part of an age cohort whose members in their youth had a far less harrowing experience.
True, the oldest members of this group experienced at the outset of their lives a high rate of infant mortality, but in their teens and 20s even this older group largely escaped the hazard of TB. Only a few of the oldest amongst them experienced the massive emigration by their peers that began to decline in the 1960s.
Amongst the current labour force the drop-out due to early deaths and emigration has been almost 400,000 lower than had been the case with that earlier labour force of 1991. This left 2.4 million survivors, rather than the 2 million of 1991, and to that number have been added 400,000 immigrants, which is well over twice the number that had been here in 1991.
The result of these positive developments during the 1991-2005 period has been an increase of over 600,000 in the size of the current 15-64 age cohort.
Even if in this 14-year period there had been no drop in unemployment, and no rise in the rate of women's participation in paid employment - thus leaving the employment participation rate at its 1991 level of under 62 per cent - this big increase in the size of the 15-64 age cohort would have increased the size of our labour force by 380,000.
However, during this intervening period the rate of female participation in the labour force has also risen sharply. In the case of married women, the participation rate has risen since 1991 by 50 per cent - from just over one-third to more than one-half - and this has added a further 120,000 to the labour force. Moreover, an increase of one-fifth in the participation rate of single women has added a further 80,000 to our labour force.
Finally a sharp drop in unemployment has also increased the numbers at work. It is all these factors that have yielded a total increase in employment of 670,000 since 1991.
None of this has been without problems: problems of housing, and especially of public and social housing; transport problems, especially for commuters; and social problems, including the childcare issue.
But there is perhaps a more fundamental question that we ought now to be addressing. In our new and unique circumstances is it still appropriate to continue to pursue a policy of maximising economic growth?
Such an approach will require a far greater flow of immigrants in relation to our native population than any other European country will be experiencing.
Given the intimidating scale of the problems that our headlong growth has already faced us with, should we instead seek to establish what might be an optimum growth rate for an economy like ours, and plan accordingly?
I wish our Government would sit down and address this key question instead of continuing to behave as if we were still a poor country that desperately needs to catch up with our neighbours.