The Stuarts and the Jacobites sought help from royal Spain, Wolfe Tone from revolutionary France, the Fenians from the US, Pearse from imperial Germany. There has been a long Irish search for foreign friends so we would no longer be the offshore island of an offshore island, locked in Britain's embrace. Thus political scientist Tom Garvin has argued recently.

There are differences in emphasis among analysts of Ireland's recent success, but all agree that the decision to join the EEC, later EU, was critical. In effect, it was the culmination of the search Garvin describes.

"The odd thing," Garvin comments, "is we have scarcely noticed that the 800-year war is over, dying quietly and unmourned some time between 1972 and 1998. The proposition that there is life after England may seem trite to people living in the late 1990s, but was one of enormous liberation 35 years ago, and for a long time not fully believed."

High-tech, high-growth, wealthy Ireland has its roots in that liberation. John FitzGerald of the ESRI considers our cultural change from the inward-looking de Valera era, to enthusiasm for the opening up of our society and economy to outside influences, as "probably the single most important factor underlying the current Irish economic renaissance".

Europe's role in Ireland's transformation has been so great that "we live in the same place but we might as well have emigrated", comments Rory O'Donnell, editor of the recently-published Europe: The Irish Experience, in which Garvin's essay appears.

There is a general perception of 1987 as a pivotal year when the crunch came for tackling the national debt and social partnership was born, but the groundwork for the successes of the 1990s had been started much earlier.

Despite the Famine, despite colonial status, "Southern Ireland modernised probably as quickly as any other country during the period 1848-1918", Prof Joe Lee has concluded. Other historians have pointed out that while Ireland was much poorer than Britain, Irish living standards were only a little below the average for western Europe by 1913.

But during the 19th century and despite two world wars, living standards on the Continent grew at a much faster pace than in Ireland. The decision to seek self-sufficiency in the early decades of the State proved a disaster. And the process of recovering from it, of opening up to trade and investment, which started in the 1960s, has taken a long time to bear fruit.

Irish GNP per capita, the best measure of national wealth, had fallen to two-thirds of the EU average in 1990. It was only last year that it was expected to rise to 95 per cent of the EU average. Seen from this perspective the years of the 1990s have been years of catchup after the Continent outstripped us during the early decades of independence.

How then has this catch-up been achieved?

John FitzGerald emphasises two key decisions: Europe invested in education after the war but only 20 years later, in 1967, was the Irish "policy of education neglect" reversed. The continental countries saw rapid rates of growth up to and including the 1970s. The Republic began investing in education 20 years late and is seeing the benefits of the investment 20 years after other northern European countries.

Secondly, the decision was taken in the late 1950s (and pursued consistently for the following 40 years) of seeking out and attracting foreign investment. In the long list of progenitors of our success a place would have to be reserved for Ken Whitaker and Sean Lemass, civil servant and taoiseach respectively, who were the key architects of the second decision, and Donogh O'Malley, who as minister for education was architect of the first.

From education flow so many other changes: the decision to limit families: the birth rate fell finally from 1980 (in the rest of Europe this happened after the post-war baby boom); the decision of women to work outside the home; the ability of the Industrial Development Authority to market a young, educated workforce; the emergence of confidence in the arts and in business; the maturing of society to the point where social partnership was possible.

Ironically, the 20-year time lag between investment in education by the rest of northern Europe and Ireland's decision to follow suit is now working to our advantage. Our baby boomers coming into the labour market are productive and innovative. Our society does not face the problems of an ageing population.

In the small stable of literature about the path to our success, no one hero or heroine stands out. There were many contributors. If Ray MacSharry was the man who introduced the tough budget of 1987, it was Alan Dukes as leader of Fine Gael who fell on his sword in the national interest and agreed to support him.

And that budgetary change alone would not have brought us to where we are today, had not the social partners reached their first agreement and had not the deepening of European unification embraced by us brought floods of public and private investment from the Continent and the US and a wider market for our goods.

Tomorrow: where are all the new jobs?