Troubled Geographies:
A Spatial History of Religion
and Society in Ireland
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Troubled Geographies:
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8. Towards the Celtic Tiger: the Republic, 1961 to 2002Up to this point the story of the south of Ireland’s economic fortunes has been characterised by stagnation and failure. From the beginning of the 1960s a series of policy changes would occur in the Republic which would have profound consequences for the state, not simply in the economic sphere but impacting deeply into the social, political, demographic and even religious realms. It may at first glance be tempting to view the period from 1961 to 2002 in terms of a linear and irresistible path towards economic and social maturity, but such a simplistic teleological interpretation bears little resemblance to what was an extremely turbulent period in the state’s short history. Background: A new departureThe 1950s in the Republic of Ireland has come to be seen as a time of economic and social stagnation. In the thirty years since independence the state had failed to provide the economic means for people to remain in their own country. More than 400,000 people left the Republic between 1951 and 19611. This was the spur to drive up industrial employment and stimulate indigenous entrepreneurship which led to the First and Second Programme for Economic Expansion which significantly broadened Ireland's economic horizons and profoundly affected its demography, with the population growing by 100,000 during the 1960s2. The 1970s again saw problems as the Oil Crisis exposed Ireland's vulnerability to foreign markets, nevertheless, the corner had been turned and the country was able to move towards the Celtic Tiger era. Population: Staunching the flowFig 8.1: Republic of Ireland rural, urban and total populations between 1951-2002. RoI: Republic of Ireland. *Defined as all urban areas with a population of or in excess of 1,500. †Defined as including urban areas with a population below 1,500. An over-arching objective of the radical restructuring of the Republic's economy in the late 1950s and early '60s was to remedy Ireland's population problem. Overall, as figure 8.1 shows, it was successful in doing this, however, this exacerbated existing trends of urbanisation and rural decline.
The population density maps in figure 8.2 show that while population densities were increasing in and around Dublin and regional centres such as Cork, Limerick and Galway, it continued to decline over many rural districts particularly in western parts of the country. The Republic was thus becoming increasingly divided a depopulated rural periphery and a rapidly-growing urban and suburban core. Fig 8.3: Percentage population change at rural and urban district level for the Republic of Ireland between 1951 and 2002. Figure 8.3 shows just how dramatically this transition was in terms of dividing the developing east coast from the decaying western seaboard. Decline was most pronounce in north-western parts of the Republic, especially in Leitrim, Roscommon and eastern Mayo. Fig 8.4: Population growth in Counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow relative to the rest of the Republic of Ireland between 1951 and 2002. D,K,M&W: Counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow Figure 8.4 takes this further by showing how Dublin and its surrounding counties have grown from having 30 percent of the country's population in 1951 to almost 40 percent half a century later. Most of this growth did not take place in the Borough of Dublin, but instead happened in the surrounding districts.Fig 8.5: Population change in four towns between 1951 and 2002: Castlerea (Roscommon), Charlestown (Mayo), Celbridge (Kildare) and Swords (Dublin). The graph above compares the experience of four market towns over the second half of the twentieth century. It illustrates how the towns near to Dublin, Celbridge and Swords, experienced rapid growth as they mushroomed into satellite settlements, while Castlerea and Charlestown, which started with similar populations but who were in peripheral areas, continued to stagnate. Economic shift: Celtic Panda to Celtic TigerGiven the reversals and setbacks which characterised the gestation of the Republic's economic rise, the panda may provide a more appropriate mammalian metaphor than the tiger for much of the fiscal performance since the 1950s. Nevertheless the state’s population was beginning to grow and move rapidly. Driving these seismic changes in Irish demography was the engine of industrialisation. Fig 8.6: Employment in the manufacturing sector as a percentage of the adult population at county level for the Republic of Ireland in (a) 1951, (b) 1961, (c) 1971, (d) 1981, (e) 1991 and (f) 2002. Figure 8.6 shows how the economic reforms of the late 1950s managed to increase industrialisation across wide swathes of the country. After 1981, however, the country then rapidly moved to a post-industrial economy as manufacturing p declined through the 1980s. This is illustrated in figure 8.7 which shows unemployment from 1961 to 2001. Fig 8.7: Male unemployment at county level for the Republic of Ireland in (a) 1961, (b) 1971, (c) 1981, (d) 1991 and (e) 2002. The maps show how unemployment rose in the 1980s, especially in Donegal, but then declined through the 1990s as new sectors emerged to replace manufacturing. These are shown in the two series of maps in figures 8.8 and 8.9 which show the emergence of the clerical sector and the commercial and financial sectors respectively. Fig 8.8: Population employed in the clerical sector as a percentage of the adult population at county level for the Republic of Ireland in (a) 1971, (b) 1981, (c) 1991 and (d) 2002. Fig 8.9: Population employed in the commercial and financial sectors as a percentage of the adult population at county level for the Republic of Ireland in (a) 1971, (b) 1981, (c) 1991 and (d) 2002. Growth of the financial sector was concentrated on the east coast, particularly around Dublin, but the clerical sector more generally was spread across the entire country. Fig 8.10: Population employed in agriculture as a percentage of the adult population at county level for the Republic of Ireland in (a) 1961, (b), 1971, (c) 1981, (d) 1991 and (e) 2002. The maps in figure 8.10 emphasise this shift by showing the decline in agricultural employment which has occurred in every census since 1961. In 1961 only County Dublin had agricultural employment rates of less than eight percent. In 2002 every county had rates below this. Fig 8.11: Percentage of college-educated adults by county for the Republic of Ireland in (a) 1971, (b)1981, (c) 1991 and (d) 2001. The expansion of higher education was central to the Republic's economic fortunes in the latter part of the twentieth century. The 1970s saw a substantial increase increase the the number of places available in third-level education as the number of universities and colleges increased. Figure 8.11 shows how the number of people educated to degree level increased across the country. The availability of an educated, young workforce in the emerging new technology sector combined with a highly successful tradition of industrial incentivisation created the firm foundations for the 'Celtic Tiger' period. These conditions, as well as excellent marketing of 'quality of life' benefits prompted multinational corporations such as Microsoft and Intel to set up not only assembly operations but extensive research and development infrastructure in the Republic3. By the end of the century the state was the fastest growing economy and the fourth-richest country in the world. It had truly earned the moniker of the 'Celtic Tiger.' The changing role of religionOver the same period the role of religion in the Republic of Ireland has also changed remarkably, a transformation that has been affected in part by the process of modernisation but to a far greater extent by developments since the 1950s which have affected the position of the organisation to which the overwhelming majority of the Republic's population have traditionally subscribed, the Catholic Church.
Fig 8.13: Responses to the religion question in Republic of Ireland censuses between 1961 and 2002 categorised by major religious group. CoI: Church of Ireland, Pres: Presbyterians, Other rels: Other religions. Figure 8.13 also shows evidence of new religious trends. Through the 1990s both of the main Protestant groups increased their membership in the Republic area for the first time since the mid-nineteenth century . The Church of Ireland population grew by 30 percent and the Presbyterians by 56 percent compared to a more modest increase of 7.3 percent amongst Catholics. More dramatically, other religions increased by 123 percent. This can be ascribed to the influx of immigrants who have begun to alter the religious geographies of the Republic's towns and cities.Fig 8.14: Responses to religion question in Republic of Ireland censuses between 1961 and 2002 categorised by simple affiliation, non-affiliation, or refusal to submit information. Perhaps more striking than the dynamics of religious change has been the increase in people who no longer choose to affiliate with any religion. Figure 8.14 shows that people not identifying with a religion remains low on western European standards but has increased rapidly in the late-twentieth century. In 1961 those professing to have no religious affiliation accounted for less then 0.04 of the Republic's population, by 2002 this had increased to 3.5% with numbers having doubled over the 1990s.Fig 8.15: Inter-censal percentage change in responses to religion question in Republic of Ireland censuses between 1961 and 2002. Figure 8.15 emphasises this trend. In the 1960s those professing no religion increased by 600 percent and those refusing to answer increased by 729 percent, while the growth in the religious population was closer to six percent. Interestingly these changes fell away in the 1980s and 1990s when the proportion of those refusing to answer actually declined. Reasons for these changes are largely speculative but could be a response to the Troubles, especially in the 1970s, modernisation leading to secularisation, or broader changes in public attitudes. ConclusionsThis chapter has sought to explore spatially and statistically some of the remarkable changes that affected the Republic of Ireland during the second half of the twentieth century. The scale and speed of those changes across the dimensions of time and space have left the country, despite the oscillations of the global trade cycle, in a far better economic position than at the start of the period. However, the gap between richest and poorest has increased, social inequalities are still entrenched and the distribution of wealth has remained heavily skewed4. At a cultural and social level, through the homogenising impacts of free trade and globalisation, a more 'relaxed view of Irishness' may have been achieved, but the power of ‘advertising prose and Muzak’ in re-determining Irish identity in this period is the era’s defining motif5. 1. J. Blackwell, ‘Government, Economy and Society’ in F. Litton (ed.) Unequal Achievement: The Irish Experience 1957 – 1982 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1982), p.43. 2. Foster, Modern Ireland, pp.577-578. 3. L. Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture Critical Conditions: Field Day Essays and Monographs, 2 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996), pp.86-89. 4. . Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900 – 2000 (London: Profile Books, 2004), p.703; R. Breen & C.T. Whelan, 'Social Mobility in Ireland: A Comparative Analysis' in A.F. Heath, R. Breen & C.T. Whelan (eds.) Ireland North and South: Perspectives from the Social Sciences Proceedings of the British Academy, 98 (Oxford: The British Academy, 1999), p.337; P. Lyons, ‘The Distribution of Personal Wealth in Ireland’ in A.A. Tait & J.A. Bristow (eds.) Ireland: Some Problems of a Developing Economy (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1972), p.178. 5. Foster, Modern Ireland, p.596; Buckley, Memory Ireland: Insights into the contemporary Irish condition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p.ix. |
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©Ian Gregory & Niall Cunningham, 2013
Fig 8.2: Population density at rural and urban district level,
(a) 
