No signs of an end to our spend, spend and spend

DID YOU see the amount of money people were spending over Christmas? Talk about conspicuous consumption... is there no end to it?

Of course there will be. But meanwhile, watch out for the next big spending boom - happening almost imminently at a travel agent near you.

You don't mean that people will have enough left after that splurge to take a holiday?

Not only that but they'll be spending twice as much - about £2,000 a family - as they used to on the old staples of sun, sand and sea and they'll be travelling further for them. We've become pretty sophisticated about our holidays, you know. The number of skiing holidays we take has trebled over the past five years. A lot of us expect to take two holidays this year. Feel good, did you say? As our American cousins might say, we feel awesome.

Ah, sure, but they couldn't stretch to a new car now, could they, what with the second holiday and everything?

Don't bet on it - not with that dazzling, irrepressible blast of economic sunshine on which we all appear to be walking. The registration of new cars exploded last year as we know (by 32 per cent actually) but the real trend, say the experts at Henley Centre Ireland, is towards a second car in the family - which probably explains why Operation Freeflow was needed to get Dublin moving again.

Is that why there was so much pub chat about transport this year?

Yes, there was a lot of that going on, partly about Luas, but there were glimmers too of serious grassroots debate about whether cars should be allowed in the city centres at all and of course, there was Pat Kenny's Walk to Work day. We could be seeing a trend here...

Might the move back towards city living have something to do with it?

That's an interesting one. The surge of interest in apartment-living is extraordinary. One of the reasons may well be the decline in average Irish family size - just under two children oddly enough, bringing us closer to the EU average. Tax benefits no doubt have something to do with the attractions of inner-city apartment living, too.

In any event, the move to city living may eventually reveal itself as part of the rural revolt, a trend identified by British forecasters. The rural revolters are the people who thought life in the country would be all sunshine, sanitised nature and green wellies but discovered - surprise, surprise - that it wasn't.

So who's buying up all the suburban houses that are streaming on to the market?

Even the experts are pretty baffled by that. It's almost as if house numbers are growing faster than households, they say. But it does beg the question of how sustainable the increase in housing stock will be in say, two to three years when, they say, there will be a lull.

Trouble ahead then?

Could be, but some sectors seem safe enough. Restaurateurs for example, can rest easy, by all accounts. Eating out has been hugely buoyed up and will even accelerate by what he calls the "middle-ageing" population. The real bonanza for restaurateurs is in the 45 to 60 age group, where most of the growth in population is going. And they, of course, are at the peak of the life cycle in terms of income and dwindling child, expenses, so they have more money. And more time to spend it in.

And lots of time to learn all about lovely wine and quaff it in quantity, huh?

There's no doubt that wine has caught on. Close to 40 per cent of Irish adults drank it in 1995 compared to only 28 per cent in 1990. But for all our European-Temple Bar-cappucino-and-ciabatta ways, our wine consumption is still the lowest in Europe. In any event, the key group to watch in the drinks category is the under-25s, whose numbers have peaked in the past couple of years and will decline steadily. Bad news for the purveyors of the rampantly-popular alco-pops, I'm afraid (they're alcoholic lemonades in case you didn't already know).

Ah, but we'll go on keeping the publicans happy though, won't we?

Well, oddly enough, things could get tricky for pubs. Henley Centre Ireland, the forecasting people, reckon they will lose ground to restaurants among others - that just as pubs began to offer food all day to keep the customers drinking, more restaurants will look for added value by keeping diners drinking in bars on the premises. The massive growth of cinema multiplexes in out-of-town leisure/shopping centres may trigger new habits, too.

Older audiences have been lured back to the new-style cinemas which will probably lead in turn to opportunities for new-style drinking/dining establishments in city and suburban backwaters where people never dreamt of going before for an evening out.

But wait a minute. We've been hearing for years that people were turning against "out-of-home" entertainment in favour of "cycooning" themselves with their home entertainment units" and - lest we forget - that Internet business. What's happened?

Well, things are certainly moving in that area. Wide and big-screen televisions were big hits in the Christmas splurge as were all kinds of computer equipment. People who once thought digital meant a clock with figures instead of hands now know enough to appreciate its potential to beam about 500 television channels onto their new 40-in screens. In fact, this is no fantasy any more; for good or ill, it could be reality within a year and a half.

As for computer technology, fearless children will continue to drive the market. Already at least a fifth of Irish households have a PC and a quarter of us will probably have one by the end of 1997. This will lead to increased demand for the Internet which, though the subject of a lot of talk up to now and endless boring exchanges about e-mail, has been mainly confined to business.

At the moment, fewer than one in 50 Irish households have access to the Internet compared to one in nine in the US. The forecast is that by 2000, the Irish figure will be one in 10. And, then it seems, nothing will be impossible.

Yes, doesn't it seem sometimes that there is such hope invested in the Internet that it has acquired a curiously religious connotation, a bit like the Holy Ghost all powerful, all pervasive etc. - only more so?

Indeed. No doubt that same thought has crossed the minds of Irish churchmen in particular for whom a recent Irish Times poll provided little comfort but few surprises. The ability to consume like crazy isn't the only lead we've taken from the rest of the west. The most dramatic finding was that only 21 per cent of Catholics questioned, said they follow the church's teaching when it comes to "making moral decisions while 69 per cent expressed the belief that "in 20 years" time, Ireland will be Catholic in name but only a minority will be practising their Catholicism".

The fact that 1997 will probably see the first divorce being processed through an Irish court will hardly add balm to the wound.

But the Catholic Church isn't the only pillar of society in trouble, is it?

Few institutions have escaped scrutiny - a sign of our growing maturity we like to think. Cynicism about politicians for example, took another steep plunge in recent time amid revelations about the relationship between them and big business. Or so it seemed anyway; you have to square that with the fact that in on of those peculiar Irish turnarounds, Michael Lowry got nothing less than a hero's welcome when he arrived back in Thurles stripped of his Ministry and still with a lot of explaining to do.

We are a bit peculiar like that, aren't we?

We are indeed. Compare Mr Lowry's welcome with the revelation that one in 10 of us would deny citizenship to travellers, according to Father Michael Mac Greil's recently, published work on Irish attitudes. ,Admittedly, his study is based on surveys carried out in the late 1980s but it seems to tally with a hardening of attitudes even now, at the height of the good times.

No one, of course, should be immune to scrutiny but some eyebrows at least shot up a notch or two recently when one TD suggested that the figures on welfare fraud constituted a scandal of greater proportions than the beef tribunal. Meanwhile, suicide is still the greatest killer of our young men and some of our children still roam the streets of Irish towns and cities selling their bodies and/or stoned on heroin.

Is there anything in sight to replace the old certainties?

The one certainty is that we'll spend, spend, spend for as long as we can get away with it. That's our new credo - and it puts us right up there with the world's most "advanced" nations where those great temples to consumerism, the shopping centres, have been dubbed the new cathedrals. One of the most startling figures for 1995 was that retail space in Dublin increased by a quarter and that no one seemed to be losing out.

Okay, we're spending with the best of them, but at least we're not going to London or up North to do it any more. Isn't that good?

Depends on how you look at it.

The fact that in Dublin's brand-new Jervis Centre, three-quarters of the shops are British-owned - such as Boots, Dixons, Debenhams - has raised some eyebrows. This is born not of xenophobia or dislike of the auld enemy (at least we hope not), but of a sense that at this rate, some Dublin streets and shopping areas, could be exchanged with high streets tin Sheffield or Milton Keynes and no-one would notice the difference. In our rush to consume, we stand to lose that which makes us distinctive.

Can we do anything about it?

Not much, except to gaze in awe and admiration at their timing. Dixons et al have taken up residence at a time when there's never been so much Irish money sloshing around looking for a home.

Ah, but will it go on sloshing around?

Well, no is the obvious answer. A lot of our spending power has been driven by increased incomes, to be sure, but also by the fact that we're spending some of the money we used to save. Savings as a proportion of income have fallen quite steeply in the past couple of years, from 11.6 per cent in 1995 to 9.4 per cent in 1996.

So, fewer reserves for the inevitable rainy day?

That's the problem. For now, though, we feel invincible. In fact, the drop in savings is a surefire indicator of just how confident we Irish consumers are as well as the high priority that spending has become for us. We're virtually on a par now with our affluent European partners in terms of living standards. We're in consumer mode and nothing's going to stop us.

Nothing at all ...?

Well, the experts seem pretty sure that come summer there will be a substantial reduction in the next 12-18 months which will knock some of the gloss off our Emerald Tiger. But they insist, soothingly, it will probably be "a gentle landing".