Daft Property - Irish Property News

Kevin Myers: Failure is actually what independent Ireland has always done best. We even failed at prosperity... THE Taoiseach's recent 1916 speech, and the warm reception the references to the "heroes" of the GPO got from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, were depressingly illuminating. They confirm that our political and economic classes are steeped in denial and hallucination. Yes, Mother Ireland has reverted to ancient delusional habits, and is sustained by illicit bottles of poteen around the national household, labelled 1916. And whenever the old woman feels another attack of the vapours of 21st century realism attacking her, she reaches for a bottle, yet again. A polity which feels the need to recycle ancient events as a modern inspiration is in dire trouble. That's the real lesson from the Taoiseach's rodomontade of last week. You can look at these things mythically or you can look at them literally: either way, no interpretation of the event of 1916 is of an...

"Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change 1970-2000" is a book, by Roy Foster, that looks at the development of the Celtic Tiger... "Cuddling Up With the Celtic Tiger" ...is a report by Adam Kirsch, on the New York Sun, which gives an interesting American 'take' on "Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change"... "When you consider how large a place Ireland occupies in" the Americian "cultural imagination, it's astonishing to realize how small a country it really is. Its current population is slightly more than 4 million; more people live in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens than in all 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. If the island seems to loom like a continent, the reason is, first of all, the Irish emigration that did so much to shape America in the 19th century. According to the Census Bureau, some 34 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, more than any other nationality except German. But you don't ha...