Ireland has had little to celebrate in the last year so, as it ran further and further aground on recession and unemployment. As a result almost hysterical hopes are invested in our few achievers – the saddest example being the media madness that prefaced the unfortunate Irish rugby team’s ill-fated trip to Cardiff the other week. Well, with so few heroes and so many villains, you can hardly blame the unfortunate population.

As it happens, one of the areas most heavily battered by government taxes and duties, not to mention the impact of decreased spending power from the recession, is music. And, almost as a deliberate illustration of the old law that the arts triumph in adversity, music, and lets call it progressive popular music in particular), has already provided us with some of our most notable achievers for 1983.

U2’s staggering leap to the top of the album charts in Britain is the most striking at the moment, but the new albums currently emerging from Clannad and Scullion, as well as recent singles achievements abroad by Auto Da Fe and Tokyo Olympics, show quite clearly that in spite of the country’s poverty, musicians have come of age with a vengeance, and across a formidable range of styles.