Madam, - Tom Garvin, in his recent book Preventing the Future: Why Was Ireland Poor for So Long?, answers by blaming a combination of a popular Catholic Church, the language movement, the farmers and conservative rulers. As so often happens in Irish historical writing, but untypically for Garvin, this explanation suffers from not being checked against a comparable case elsewhere.
The most obvious comparative case is Norway, which at independence in 1905 was poorer than Ireland. It had a conservative and influential Protestant church, a language movement and a preponderance of farmers and fishermen. But during the following 25 years it became a well-off country. The transformation was brought about by native business enterprise using Norway's natural resources, inherited skills and imported technology.
Surely the principal immediate reason who post-Independence Ireland did not quickly become prosperous was the dire lack of Irish entrepreneurs using the country's natural resources, inherited skills and imported technology. And if so, the full answer to Garvin's question would lie in finding why there was this poverty of Irish business enterprise.
Moreover, that question could be extended into recent years when Ireland, finally prosperous, became a rich country primarily because of the investment of foreign capital and enterprise, and only secondarily because of a modest increase in native business enterprise. Why, in changed circumstances, this persisting comparative weakness of Irish enterprise? - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND FENNELL, Anguillara, Rome, Italy.