From 1977 to 2007 in 30 steps

Well! 30 years, eh? But nothing starts in a vacuum. For all the silly nostalgia, the ‘70s were pretty grim. Certain things had already happened. Hunter Thompson said the ‘60s ended when people moved from hash and acid on to speed. Perhaps. But for most people, the ‘60s ended with the Yom Kippur war and the oil crisis that followed in 1973. That was the moment when everyone realised two key things. The first was that energy was finite and the second was that horizons were finite too. The end of the world was nigh.

At home, pirates ruled the waves, the Church held sway and the smart ones moved away. You had to go north for condoms and east, or west, for a career. There were rumblings under the earth’s crust – a band like Horslips had shown that, uneven as it might be, you could operate from an Irish base. There had been films made. There was the Project Arts Centre. And a few interesting new names were emerging in literature. But when you look at it now, it’s another world, it really is.
And not one any sane person would even think of wanting to go back to. So here then are the 30 ways in which Ireland has changed...

1. Education
Before there was a modern Ireland, a number of key people decided that investment in education was the way we’d break free from the old cautions, the old shibboleths and the old ways. TK Whittaker and Seán Lemass understood the value of knowledge almost half a century before there was a knowledge society. They decided to invest accordingly. Whatever about economic stagnation, the Irish were highly educated and, it turned out, very sophisticated in their understanding of the world. The college boys and girls of the late ‘60s and the early ‘70s began to have an impact as that decade wore on. By the time Hot Press hit the streets, there was a new educated underground of people who had things to say about Irish society and the ambition to make their voices heard. It took until our luck changed in the early 1990s for the investment to pay back fully – but make no mistake, we wouldn’t be where we are today if someone hadn’t been wide to the benefits of education.

2. The Luck Of The Irish
But of course, you need the ball to bounce your way too. For a long time it didn’t, and after Jack Lynch’s Fianna Fáil landslide back to power in 1977, they hocked the future by abolishing rates and generally behaved like drunken sailors. It nearly screwed us. There was a time when it looked like the World Bank would foreclose on us for our feckless ways. And some readers will be old enough to remember the Terror in 1987 when we got very used to the term cut-back, very used to it indeed.
A vast army of our well-educated graduates emigrated along with the more traditional emigrants. The equivalent of one and a half age cohorts – 1.5 times as many people as were born in 1987 left the jurisdiction for other shores. Give or take a nuance here or there, it was the same as what’s happening in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland right now.
But our luck changed. A baby boom matured at exactly the moment when we needed a young, flexible, smart, well-educated workforce. The US economy picked up and American companies were looking for a base in Europe, one that didn’t look down on them and actually liked Europe… and that spoke English. Well, hello!
And we didn’t have a vast smoky heavy industry to restructure.
Talk about good fortune!

3. The EU
Ah yes, Europe, our friends and benefactors. We are still the most enthusiastic Europeans, the happiest, the most optimistic. We like it. It has subsidised our farmers to a degree beyond description. Vast transfers happened under the Common Agricultural Policy. And then there were the Cohesion Funds and the Structural Funds and Jaysus bless the German and Dutch taxpayers for floating the whole show back then…
But it wasn’t all one way traffic. We were the most popular members because we always tried to find the common ground. It was usually in an Irish pub, but so what? As often as not when a crucial compromise was needed between the major blocs it was the Irish who found the words.
But also, as time went by, we emerged as the best kid in the class. Our benefactors looked on with wonder as we reeled them in, as our economy took off as we changed – it seemed in little more than the blink of an eye – from failure to success, from rags to riches, from emigrant society to immigrant economy…
It was our unique selling point with the Americans that, as well as being the country from which many of their ancestors had come, we were a friendly and enthusiastic gateway to the European Union. And we milked it for what it was worth.

4. Planning
In truth, none of this should be construed as a miracle. None of it was an accident. Despite what some self-haters might tell you, we didn’t con anybody, well not much anyway and no more than any of the other European countries do as a matter of routine. Our economic success was the end point of a long history of planning, for example by the IDA.
But Europe brought that out of us too. In order to draw down what were really very large sums in the 1980s we had to have a plan. We had to show what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. We learned well. We’re still at it. Check out the Future Skills Strategy. Of course, we also do urban planning. But that’s a whole other story!

5. Future Skills Yield Fruit
Very early on our wiser heads identified a number of industrial and economic areas that were likely to prove fruitful, including electronics and pharmaceuticals. We identified the information society early. The companies that were drawn in by the lower taxes and high skills pool in Ireland included Intel and Dell. They raised our credibility and our game. That Dell is now contemplating layoffs shows that it’s all cyclical. Many of our production-line technological jobs have gone east. But even as they do, we’re trying to divine the next phase, the next generation of jobs. Don’t knock it. Planning and futures research keeps the big wheel turning… for us all.

6. Pirate Radio
When Hot Press was launched there were no official ‘young people’s’ radio stations. On air, there was banality and decay. And there were the pirates. Ah yes, now that was different. On the air and off the wall, peopled by enthusiasts and grotesques alike, the pirate radio stations of the late 1970s gave voice to fans and played the music everyone wanted to hear but couldn’t.
Nothing lasts forever, of course, and in time 2FM was established as the official ‘youth’ station. As time went by and the independent broadcasting sector opened up, there were more, offering greater variety. And of course there’s local radio. One of the pleasures of driving through the Irish countryside is to tune in to the local stations to get a feel for what’s going down with the grass roots. It’s fantastic, a delight, part of what we are. By the end of 2007, there’ll be 35 national, local and regional stations on air and 22 community stations. And then there’s the oncoming digital revolution! Hard to believe that in 1977, there was just Radio Éireann.

7. Music
At the beginning of the ‘70s, Rory Gallagher and Thin Lizzy had gone the orthodox route, basing themselves in London. But their success made a point to people back home. Horslips, meanwhile, had shown that a band could be based in Ireland and still do international business.
The conventional history holds that punk changed the world, introducing a disrespect and a do-it-yourself, invent-yourself ethic that has washed through society. But in many respects punk actually gave a framework that explained what was already happening in Ireland. A tide of change had already started to sweep through the music scene here, encompassing Hot Press, the pirates and the new recording studios that were in the process of setting up.
The Boomtown Rats were the most visibly successful band in the immediate post-punk era. The Radiators’ literate and fantastically intense music showed just what an Irish band could actually achieve. Up north, meanwhile, The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers blazed a trail. Beyond that, of course, U2 emerged to change the landscape – and the whole vast, extraordinary explosion of music making and gig-going that transformed the notion of youth culture in Ireland followed.
It couldn’t work without an industry, without the management, the record companies, the publishers, the promoters. And we have world class talents here in all these spheres. The late Jim Aiken was the first to make Ireland a key point in international tours. MCD has made its mark too, being in itself a major international player, an Irish outfit that goes toe-to-toe with the biggest.
Without music, and without U2 in particular, you wouldn’t have had the Celtic Tiger. The success of our musicians, but especially U2, gave us all the most intense self-confidence. They helped us to start believing in ourselves…

8. The Baby Boomers
The last decade and a half of relative prosperity and success was built on the energy of Ireland’s big baby boom, the children born after 1970. But their parents also deserve mention, the post-war baby boomers. This was the Levis generation, the Beatle and Dylan fans, the mods and hippies and radicals. Much lampooned during the punk era, their ideas and values haven’t ever gone away and as time has gone by have come to be seen as a whole lot more pointed than they were given credit for – in particular their environmentalism, anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigning.
Their value set and their money started to become a political influence in the late ‘70s, for example with the rise of feminism. It burst through the waterline with the election of Mary Robinson as President and with, eventually, the introduction of contraception and divorce. In these matters, as is often the case, politicians didn’t lead, they followed. The baby boomers showed the way.

9. The Irish Way With Sex – Thank Goodness For The Judge
In terms of identifying the source of the paradigm shift that has taken place in relation to Irish people’s attitude to sex, you could start with the campaign for contraception or with the feminist condom train. Wherever you place point zero, campaigners for the right to use birth control have changed this country and this society hugely for the better. Contraception was legalised only in 1980. Now condoms are everywhere and there are explicit ads on radio and telly advising you to use them. And if your marriage goes wrong, you can divorce. Extraordinarily, that legislation was introduced as late as 1997.
Of course, politicians didn’t lead on this; rather, they shirked their duty again and again and indeed they’re still shirking on the issue of abortion. It was the people who challenged the status quo who made the difference and the judges who had the wisdom to hear their voices.

10. Cocaine - Charlie… Tribunals, Planning, Corruption, Construction
We hear a lot about cocaine nowadays. It has changed the face of Irish gangs. It’s implicated in some very bad behaviour and I don’t mean misbehaving nightclubbers, I mean violence and shootings and the like.
But in a different and unexpected way, charlie changed everything in Ireland. When Ben Dunne got snorting and freaked out in a Florida hotel, it set off a chain reaction that is still rattling through the Irish political and legal system. Its main manifestation is the tribunals into corruption. But really, it was so much more important. Without that we’d never have discovered just how Charlie Haughey got his money, how the planning system in Dublin had become intolerably corrupt…
I could go on, but you know what I mean. And all thanks to Ben’s line of Charlie…

11. Heroin
Coke is the current toot of choice and top influence on our gangland culture. But through much of the last decade the definitive drug, the one that corrupted our society in a way we'd never dreamed of, was heroin.
Whole communities were devastated. Most were disadvantaged to begin with, but now had to contend with a terrible additional cancer that took their children and turned them into zombies – and criminal ones at that. The onset of HIV, spread by dirty needles, compounded the injustice.
It hasn’t gone away either…

12. My Left Foot
Movies had been made in Ireland before, but somehow My Left Foot marked the tipping point. Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan had come into cinema from literary and theatrical backgrounds and shaken things up. Now there was an Oscar to show for it. It was a long time coming, but that set the ball rolling for the establishment of an effective Irish Film Board, and the establishment of a small but growing Irish movie tradition…

13. Gary Mackay
Ah yes, dear, dear Gary Mackay of Scotland who, with three minutes remaining, scored the goal for Scotland against Bulgaria that put the Republic of into the finals of Euro ’88.
Joxer went to Stuttgart. Then to Rome. And onwards to the USA and Japan.
It was, for the record, a key moment in the birth of the Celtic Tiger. From Stuttgart on, we held our heads that little bit higher. The Germans, and later the Italians, fell in love with the noisy, friendly, singing Irish. They didn’t feel so bad about the Structural Funds after that. And they – and everyone else who saw the Irish on the box – started to come here in greater numbers as tourists…
We never looked back…

14. Eurovision
Quite how we came to find our finger on the Europulse with such absolute accuracy during the golden era of the ‘80s and ‘90s is hard to tell, but we did. And just like Jack’s army gave us a place on a world stage and a sense of our own worth, so too did the Eurovision victories embellish our swagger. Of course we knew that for the most part it wasn’t even culture, much less art – but that didn’t stop the party as Shay Healy, Johnny Logan, Brendan Graham and the rest romped to victory. Only three and a half million of us, and we were winning against the might of the rest of the 350 million strong in Europe. It was enjoyable while it lasted!

15. Riverdance
If Eurovision added to the gaiety ofthe Celtic Tiger’s graduation party, the biggest legacy it left was Riverdance and its multifarious progeny. It seems a long time ago somehow but its first showing on Eurovision final night, with Michael Flatley and Jean Butler in the lead roles, was extraordinary, in one fell swoop revitalising an aspect of Irish culture that had until then provoked nothing but derision from anyone under 25. Created by Moya Doherty and John McColgan and with music by Bill Whelan, it galvanised the audience, and the country – and spawned an industry. Oh, and it made an awful lot of money. As did Michael Flatley with his own Lord Of The Dance…

16. The Tallaght Strategy
It’s a footnote to history for many people now, but back in the bad old days in 1987, the then-leader of Fine Gael Alan Dukes made a brave decision, that he and his party would support the Government of the day to get the public finances in order. They wouldn’t agitate against what they saw was the right policy. Most economists recognise it as a key factor in allowing the Government to introduce what were often unpopular policies that were necessary to address the dire economic circumstances in which Ireland at the time lagged. Alan Dukes deserves some credit.

17. Harry’s Game…
It was a teevee show of no special interest. But its theme music, now that was different. Haunting? Yes, for sure. It was an extraordinary, pure sound, forged from the beautiful, characteristic Donegal harmonies of Clannad. It made them. Not so long before, the group had fallen out with their mentor and producer Nicky Ryan and his partner Roma Ryan, over the treatment of the youngest sibling, who had recently joined the group. Enya and the Ryans were not to be outdone – and in 1988 they released the landmark Watermark album, which spawned a huge hit in ‘Orinoco Flow’. The world, or a very large portion of it, came to think of this ethereal sound as ‘Celtic’. It didn’t matter what you called it: with Enya to the fore, selling upwards of 60 million albums worldwide and topping the charts in the US, Japan and elsewhere, the ‘Celtic’ sound has made a hugely lasting impression.

18. Lower Taxes
Look, like them or lump them, the PDs changed the way things were done in Irish politics and economics. Some of this is good and some is bad, but there can be no doubting their influence. Most tellingly, they gave the necessary ideological oomph to Charlie McCreevy’s instincts and started to move Ireland in a low tax direction. This is a low tax country, no mistake. It has been a significant factor in encouraging US companies to locate here. Trouble is, of course, it’s also been an underlying factor in the poor quality of public services and in the further opening up of a poverty gap. Ya can’t have one without the other, it seems…

19. Ryanair
Michael O’Leary gets on many people’s nerves. Ryanair attracts bad press betimes. But there is no doubt whatsoever that Ryanair has been one of the key factors in changing Ireland, and in transforming the experiences of Irish people over the past 30 years. Ryanair cut through the cosy cartel system of airlines with a power saw. It literally revolutionised air travel: the world has opened up to us. And Ireland has been opened up to the world in the most extraordinary, and generally helpful, way. Everyone who gets on a flight nowadays owes the low(er) cost of air travel to the Irish pioneer. For that he deserves a thumbs-up. At least.

20. Mobiles
When Hot Press started it was almost impossible to get a phone line: the standard waiting time was more than a year. The whole telecommunications industry has been transformed in the meantime, and Ireland is close to the cutting edge – especially where mobiles are concerned. By jaysus, did the Irish go for them in a big way. Our children will have thumbs the size of salamis from texting. We send more than anyone else. We just love our mobiles. We are them and they are us. Third policeman-like, some of us are half person, half mobile.

21. Sky Sports
For better or worse, Sky put more football (and other sports) on the box than anyone would have dreamed. In so doing has raised the income into sport hugely, and the profile of sports stars. They also raised the bar, so that terrestrial stations – like RTÉ – have improved the quality and the volume of their coverage dramatically. Sport is now central to television programming, creating a new form of global community and attracting some of the biggest audiences ever for events like the World Cup and the European Champions League finals, as well as the Olympics and the Rugby World Cup. In Ireland, the GAA have responded effectively, improving the All Ireland format dramatically. But back in 1977, could anyone have imagined the celebrity that would be accorded to John Giles and, in particular, Eamon Dunphy as a result of their role as Irish football TV pundits?

22. The Tabloids
The last decade has seen a growing infiltration into Ireland of British-owned tabloids, often with an Irish edition. And we make our own as well. They have triggered a significant shift in the media landscape. Commentators believe that there has been a coarsening of political debate. They have also promoted the notoriety here of a variety of C-list celebs and their brainless bimbos and himbos. What will be interesting to observe over the next decade will be just how much closer the Irish become to the people of the United Kingdom. Against that backdrop, the debate about a united Ireland may become far less contentious indeed. Strange days...

23. Interest Rates And The Arrival Of The Euro
Another way we got lucky was to be in an upward American economic cycle when the rest of Europe was in a downturn and, since we’d adopted the euro, we had historically low interest rates for almost a decade. And so, we borrowed. And borrowed. And borrowed. We bought houses here and there and everywhere. We speculated, and shopped until we dropped. Until now, that is. It ain’t going all pear-shaped – at least we don’t think so – but it’s bending a bit at the edges. The low interest rates are gone for good and as the German economy once again starts to rumble into gear, the demand for money means that rates are on an upward spiral. Well, it was good while it lasted!

24. Bailey’s And Ballygowan
Bailey’s is one of the biggest selling drinks in the world, fact. Its sales generate more revenue than some entire countries. It’s a kind of marketing masterpiece, a mix of alcohol and cream that was the holy grail for drinks manufacturers for a very long time. And it was invented here!
As an example of Irish entrepeneurship, Ballygowan represents a similar success. Someone had a bright idea – sell us our own water, but in a bottle. And it worked. Only recently, with contaminated drinking water in Galway, do we see that it might actually be a very good idea indeed.
But there’s a wider drink issue as well. Alcopop manufacturers were accused of inventing a drink to draw children into drinking early. Public health discourses on our drinking culture pervade the official press. There is a strong puritan streak on the loose. Be careful out there lest we lose the run of ourselves – and our sense of humour into the bargain.

25. The Singing Priests
You’d have to thank Annie Maguire, wouldn’t you? She blew the whistle on Eamon Casey. And then the truth came out about Michael Cleary. There they were, the two cheerleaders for the Pope in 1979, two people who had spoken out frequently on sexual matters, exposed as liars and cheats and hypocrites.
The end started there. It got much worse, of course, as the abuse perpetrated by paedophile priests and Christian Brothers was exposed. The name Brendan Smyth – that’s Father Brendan Smyth – was written indelibly on the national consciousness. Then there was the blood bank. And Michael Neary in Drogheda. And the terrible treatment of old people in nursing homes. And the Hepatitis C scandal. And so on.
None of these scandals would have emerged into the public light if it hadn’t been for an increasingly enquiring and competitive media. Sometimes there have been excess – but great work has been done in newspapers and on television. A lot of things have been exposed. One gets the feeling that more will follow…

26. Third World Politics
Somewhere along the way the Irish missionary consciousness came home to roost, bringing the ideas of Paulo Freire and the sense that the world didn’t have to be the way it is back home. Famine in Africa was the catalyst: as TV coverage brought the stark truth into people’s front rooms, a new generation were made aware of the extent to which poor countries were getting poorer and rich countries, amongst whom we are now numbered, getting richer. Live Aid, Drop The Debt, Live 8 and pressure on the G8 countries have all resulted from this, with Bono and Bob Geldof to the fore. There are deep ideological differences about the strategy – but it has been a hugely significant movement for change nonetheless.

27. Bans: A Story Of Comings And Goings
Oh, we had a lot of bans down the years. Women couldn’t wear trousers in UCD for example. The most notorious was the GAA’s ban on foreign games and on members of the RUC (as was) playing the game. During the last 30 years that was repealed. That process of opening up culminated in the extraordinary, emotional scenes that took place when rugby and subsequently soccer internationals were played in the magnificently re-developed Croke Park over the past year.
But some bans can be good. Like the ban (that is to say, the levy) on plastic bags and the ban on smoking in the workplace. That’s us nowadays: not gone off bans entirely…

28. The Peace Process
The Troubles were well embedded when Hot Press was launched in 1977. Day by day, year by year, the whole horrible imbroglio was catalogued and chronicled. Civilians bombed into kingdom come. People murdered at their front doors. Innocent individuals forced to carry out atrocities. Bloodshed. Strife. The hunger strikes. The campaign to free the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four. The Gibraltar killings. The catalogue of butchery and callousness went on and on and on. It was like a pall over everything in Ireland. And then came John Hume. A Hot Press interview with Gerry Adams. The signs that Republicans were beginning to feel that there might be a better way. Ceasefirers. Misfires. And a whole lot more before the Belfast Agreement was signed in 1999. There is much about the agreement that is questionable, but you can say this without fear of contradiction: pople are no longer being butchered willy nilly. No one, but no one, in their right mind could complain about that.

29. Me Me Me
Yeah, I know all about globalisation and how we all wear the same stuff and your shoes are made in Vietnam and that’s important. But we also live in a fantastically individualised world. The extraordinary advances in technology have openbed up new worlds of choice. The i-Pod is universal but the tracks are each user’s choice. And so on.
It also explains the cult of celebrity, that fundamental obsession of so many people in the modern world. Because I’m worth it. Because I don’t do anything of any value, I have to find identity and meaning in celebrity. Even vicariously. It explains Big Brother. And the creeping influence of what is called reality TV on culture generally.
Maybe these people who live for the camera – or live for what the camera shows – don’t actually exist. Maybe they’re just virtual beings. Who would know? Would anyone care?
And there’s the blog, more me me me up there on the screen. As our favourite blogger www.pittstopworks.com puts it (quoting someone else, I think), in the future everybody will be famous…to fifteen people.

30. Hot Press
It’s our birthday, so you’ll forgive us a spot of indulgence. We made our mistakes and got it wrong along the way, for sure. But Hot Press hasn’t just recorded, in its own peculiar way, the wild and contradictory history of Ireland – and the wider world – over the past 30 years. It has helped it into being. Like that Charles Haughey interview. Like Bill Graham’s championing of U2. Like the way it keeps probing the edges, and is always as straight as can be… like the way it interviewed Ian Paisley Junior.
Now there’s a man who appreciates what it means to be straight…