It's not all about new cars. Another symptom of the boom here - one that might even warm the heart of a German ambassador - is that many people have upgraded their pianos.
Back in the cash-strapped 1980s when the Dublin International Piano Competition was founded, the organisers had to vet the pianos of host families and divide them into classes A, B and C. The idea was that, while a C-grade piano would do for the early days of practice, competitors had to be rostered to ensure access to a B, and finally an A, as first-round performances loomed.
Now this has all changed, says the competition's co-founder John O'Conor: "Because of the affluence, there are A pianos everywhere." So that 93D car outside the National Concert Hall may well go unclaimed, and maybe we have become slaves to money. But the nation's soul is not lost yet when so many people are playing Chopin on 06- and 07-registered Steinways.
From his handsome office in the Royal Irish Academy of Music, O'Conor reflects on this and other changes in his 60 years. He will mark the significant birthday next week with a concert in the NCH devoted to the composer who has dominated his career - Beethoven - and featuring some of students over whom he presides in his day job as RIAM director. All proceeds from the night will go to the third passion of his life: the aforementioned international piano competition, now sponsored by AXA.
O'Conor's early life was a role model for feckless music students everywhere. He first studied at the College of Music (his parents couldn't afford the Academy), and for years did as little practice as possible at home: "We had the upright piano against one wall and a clock on the other, and I used to have a crick in my neck from checking to see if my 20 minutes was up yet." As late as 17, he was still a slacker.
"If I were my own student now, I'd murder me," he says. "I'd give myself hell. I simply wouldn't accept that somebody was practising the way I was." But the breakthrough finally came when he had to master a Mendelssohn piano concerto. Practising for four hours a day was a whole new experience, he recalls, "and I thought it was wonderful".
He had belatedly discovered the work ethic that would earn him global fame. It had been planted by his mother, who saw education as the key to everything, and had tears in her eyes they day he presented her with a cup won at the Feis Ceoil. But to this day, O'Conor still thinks of himself as lacking drive, so often was he told this growing up. When someone once accused him of being a "workaholic", he was amused enough to report the comment to his wife, who assured him it was true.
His father drove him too, in a different way. In the years after his Mendelssohn epiphany, when the piano prodigy took to doing finger exercises eight hours a day, he drew inspiration from O'Conor Snr. The latter had laboured for 55 years in a sawmill in Dublin's D'Olier Street until the firm went into liquidation and retired him - in 1967 - on £35 a month: "I thought: if he worked nine to five, I should too." Although tone deaf, his father was "a gorgeous man" and, in special moments, O'Conor senses his presence still. "I got emotional when Trinity gave me an honorary doctorate a couple of years ago, because I felt he was there."
O'Conor had no musical inheritance, but you can never tell when and where the muse will settle. His own sons are a case in point. Despite having two accomplished pianists as parents, neither of the young O'Conors persisted with the instrument beyond childhood. One then took up the violin for a while, with painful results. His father recalls the happy day when an RIAM teacher took him aside and asked permission to be frank, before informing him that his son was "incredibly untalented" with strings.
O'Conor laughs at the memory: "I said [ to the teacher]: Do you know what a relief it is to hear that?" The failed violinist opted for the trumpet finally, with some success. But then, as RIAM director, O'Conor often reminds teachers that their job is not primarily about producing the performers of the future: "It's about producing the audiences."
At 60, his own performing career is going strong. "I've been very lucky. I thought it would be all over at 40, because everybody wants to hear only young people. But here I am at 60 and I'm actually turning down lots of work." If his memory and fingers stay nimble, he could continue for decades yet: "Rubinstein was still playing into his 90s. Kempff was playing into his 80s." O'Conor especially likes the precedent of a Russian-American pianist who "signed a new recording contract at 97 - for 10 years, which I thought was wonderfully optimistic".
As for himself, he thinks that another decade should be enough to earn him the status of a listed building: "If I play to the age of 70, I'll be 'the eminent Irish pianist'. If I get to 80 and I'm still playing, I'll be 'the legendary Irish pianist'. It doesn't matter a damn how you play at that stage. It's the fact that you're still doing it at all."
John O'Conor's 60th Birthday Celebration is at the National Concert Hall next Tuesday, October 2nd.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie