children are becoming "spoilt brats, greedy young rats and their parents materialistic and shallow", a national newspaper editor has claimed.
Mr Liam Hayes, editor of Ireland on Sunday, said children were always wanting more, were demanding and trying to catch up with their parents who were also always looking for more, because of the Celtic Tiger. Young people were committing suicide because of this rat-race, he claimed.
He also suggested that soccer star Roy Keane did not appear to be a happy person even though he was earning millions of pounds. He was not setting a good example to young people. - one an 8-seater family carrier and another which Ireland on Sunday had told him to use whenever he wanted.
On the theme of "The Down side of the Celtic Tiger" at the Humbert School in Castlebar yesterday, Mr Hayes asked whether it really was a tiger or a rat. He could remember precisely when he last saw a rat. It was 17 years ago on a Sunday night at his parents' home in Meath. He was trying to shore it up at the back door but didn't want to kill it as he was terrified of rats. Later on that evening, he heard his only brother, Gerard, had committed suicide.
Since then he equated suicide with rats. "When I tend to think of the Celtic Tiger now I think of rats; rats in a race. Nobody takes time to stop or change a tyre."
"What terrifies me about the Celtic Tiger is that it has refused our young people discipline, it has refused them the gift of respect for people or parents and no respect for money. It has spoiled our children silly. No straps at school, no harsh words at home, and quite rightly so, but what has happened is that this has been replaced by something else.
"I think the Celtic Tiger has turned our children into spoilt little brats, greedy little rats, being reared by shallow, selfish parents."
There was a price for this we would know about in due course. "The Celtic Tiger has made our children mean, people who want more all the time and are forever demanding. When they become adults what does the Celtic Tiger promise them?"
Mr Hayes suggested it would offer them the opportunity to become part of the fastest-growing economy in Europe and would allow them to be part of a country with the highest suicide rates in Europe - which, he claimed, was not coincidental.
"Our children see that we want more all the time and they want more and they want to catch up with us. Some decide they don't want to catch up. They choose to hang themselves, to shoot themselves, they just disappear."
Mr Hayes concluded that individuals who committed suicide were not losers, they just did not want to be part of a rat-race.