Preventing the Future: Why Ireland Was So Poor for So Long

From the mid-thirties to 1960, independent Ireland endured economic stagnation and a period of intense cultural and psychological repression. External circumstances - the depression of the thirties, World War II and post-war trade barriers which discouraged exports - accounted for only part of the problem. This book argues that the situation was aggravated by internal circumstances: especially the failure to extend higher and technical education to larger sections of the population. This failure was due to political stalemates in a small country; derived in particular from the power of the Catholic Church, the strength of the small-farm community, the ideological wish to preserve an older society and, later, gerontocratic tendencies in the social and political elites. mass education resulted in large numbers of young people being denied preparation for life in the modern world and, arguably, denied Ireland a sufficient supply of trained labour and educated citizens.

Tom Garvin is professor of Politics at University College Dublin. His books include The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (1981), Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland (1987) and 1922: the Birth of Irish Democracy (1996). He is also the author of many articles and chapters on Irish and comparative politics. He is an alumnus of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has taught at the University of Georgia, Colgate University and Mount Holyoke College.