Is class dead? Few people want to define themselves by a social label any more, yet inequality is on the rise, writes Fionola Meredith.

Have the dramatic economic successes of the last decade in Ireland led to a more egalitarian society, making the terms working class, middle class and upper class redundant? Despite the recent slowdown in Ireland's economic growth, and subsequent increase in unemployment, the sunshine of affluence continues to cast a glow over the country. Or so it seems. Irish people are now richer than Americans: Ireland's GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) is $36,360, compared with a US figure of $35,750. And the United Nations Development Index, which assesses countries on a range of socio-economic indicators - including life expectancy, education, literacy and income - rates Ireland 10th on the 2004 index, up from 12th place last year.

"Our continuing rise up this independently compiled index reflects Ireland's huge economic and social progress in recent years," said Tom Kitt, Minister of State for Development Co-operation and Human Rights. "We are now in the top 10 countries in the world in terms of human development."

But, as widely reported earlier this year, after a decade of economic growth, Ireland has the second-highest level of poverty in the western world. Class inequalities and social exclusion remain deeply embedded.

The UN states that the richest 10 per cent of Irish people are 9.7 times wealthier than the poorest 10 per cent. More than 20 per cent of the Irish population is illiterate, while the proportion of GDP spent on public healthcare by the State is substantially less than other European countries.

Higher poverty levels, increasingly unequal income distribution and the worsening phenomenon of homelessness are just some of the problems which lurk behind the upbeat socio- economic analysis of the Government.

It seems prosperity is increasing in inverse proportion to social equality here: in the well-worn phrase, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

So where does that leave the notion of class? Do today's young adults see it as an outmoded, irrelevant concept, or as something more important than ever given the social challenges facing Ireland today? A number of people in their 20s explain what class means to them.

Kelly Andrews was born and brought up in Cabra, on Dublin's northside, which would include a large working-class population. Now in her mid-20s and living in Co Down, she is active in green politics, holding the position of secretary in the Northern Ireland Green Party. Andrews describes herself as a "platinum blonde hairstylist with a 2:1 politics degree". She's a hair salon manager who's as much at home discussing Rousseau's theories of natural law as she is advising on highlights.

Andrews believes that many people still think and act along class lines.

"I myself am a prime example. People stereotype me all the time. Because I work as a hairdresser, people are shocked that they can actually have an intellectual conversation with me," she says. "I'm judged on my hair, how I dress, how I speak. But since doing my degree, I feel less intimidated by customers, much less concerned about who they are, what they do. Doing the degree made a massive personal difference to me."

Does her degree mean she now identifies herself as middle class?

"No. I'm working class - but well- educated," she says. She thinks that school is a place where class remains very influential.

"I didn't have the same educational opportunities as middle-class kids," she says. "The idea of coming home and sitting down to do homework just wasn't in my background. And at school, although I was interested in becoming a lab technician, careers guidance steered me firmly towards hairdressing. My social class definitely influenced the range of opportunities open to me."

Thomas Kador (26) works with the homeless in Dublin. He's originally from Austria, but has lived in Ireland for seven years. He has become much more class-conscious since coming to Ireland, observing that "class divisions seem particularly strong here". But Kador thinks that even in Ireland our understanding of class has shifted.

"The idea of class is different now; it's collapsed, become fuzzy," he says. "There are many more sub-classes, and the key issue here is self-perception. People prefer to call themselves lower middle class rather than working class - it takes the edge off it."

What about the old idea of working-class pride then?

"In many areas of Dublin, there is still a powerful sense of class," Kador says. "Class is very much tied to origin. But in my experience, being working class is seen as a burden rather than a source of pride. It's something you want to climb out of, something you try to escape. It's about social advancement - about getting a mortgage and driving a bigger car."

So how is class changing?

"Across Europe, there is a perception that the working classes are a dying race, that everyone is moving towards the middle class," Kador says. "Certainly, the working class are seen as less significant as a power that pushes for change. But the people who I work with - the homeless, drug-users - they're not even on the class scale at all. They're outside the system. Maybe the new working class will be made up of people who are outside the organised labour force: students, the unemployed, the homeless, asylum-seekers."

Several years ago, in their book Social Mobility and Social Class in Ireland, academics Christopher Whelan and Richard Breen argued that class barriers in Ireland are more rigid than in other countries. Drawing on research by the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, they identified "a continued capacity of those in privileged positions to maintain their relative advantages against the encroachment of outsiders".

So has the economic boom made class barriers more or less of an obstacle? And has increased wealth shrivelled our social conscience?

Johnny Small (24) lives and works in Dublin. He thinks that new wealth has contributed to making the class system more rigid in Ireland.

"This social inflexibility has probably run concurrently with the Celtic tiger," he says. "But now that that economic phenomenon is fading, I do think there's more social awareness. Just look at Fianna Fáil's attempt to be more socially aware, saying they'll look out for the less well off in society, the marginalised. That's in direct response to pressure from the electorate."

Popular culture has long represented being working class as a subversive badge of honour. Being middle class, on the other hand, is associated with stodgy conservatism. Reflecting on the social changes in post-conflict Northern Ireland, political commentator Newton Emerson says: "Being embarrassed about being middle class is extremely middle class, so it is not surprising that this affectation has become more widespread as Northern Ireland itself becomes more middle class."

But is this trend evident throughout Ireland? Jane Raffino (29), a Dublin-based postgraduate student, thinks so. She believes that "class has always been as much about perception as reality".

"Many middle-class people much prefer to identify with the working class. They adopt personae, behaving as if they're economically and socially disadvantaged when they're not. Worse still, some middle-class people come to the working class with the attitude: 'You are oppressed and we will free you!' But no one likes being told what to think. They say 'we must give working-class people a voice', but they already have one. It shouldn't be about 'helping those less fortunate than us' - that's so patronising."

Dr Mick O'Connell is a lecturer in social psychology at University College Dublin. In his recent book, Changed Utterly: Ireland and the New Irish Psyche, he states emphatically that "Ireland is one of the most economically unequal societies and has grown steadily more unfair in the recent past".

O'Connell believes that the "spectre of individualism" haunting Ireland means that we have abandoned "duties around fairness to vulnerable sections of society, obligations to help others, the need to bring everyone else along".

But has this "race for freedom" also helped to erode class constraints?

"No. The reality is that class is still with us," O'Connell says. "Gender, age and class remain the three fundamentals in terms of how our lives are circumscribed. It used to be thought that Ireland was too small to have social classes. It was certainly easier in the 1980s when we all lived in dignified poverty. But there is an increasing gap between the winners and losers in Ireland today."