If, in a thousand years' time, someone comes across a copy of yesterday's Irish Times, they will get a sense of what Ireland was like in the early years of this millennium.
A Dublin-based property company, Cosgrave Property Group, was reported to have bought a shopping centre in east London for €412 million. The Bank of Ireland had sold another London shopping centre for €282 million.
Kerry Group, a food company based in Tralee, was seeking to buy one of Britain's iconic food companies, Birds Eye, for nearly €1.5 billion. CRH, the Irish buildings material company, was reported to be about to spend €1 billion on purchasing a US construction company, having already spent €800 million on other purchases so far in 2006.
Ryanair said it would continue to fly aircraft out of London's Stansted airport in spite of a threatened baggage-handlers and check-in staff strike. The reference might prompt the reader in 3006 of The Irish Times of yesterday to make further inquires about Ryanair and discover the Irish airline had become the most profitable and successful airline in Europe and had earned pre-tax profits of €128.6 million in the quarter to the end of June, up 75 per cent on the same period the previous year.
And at the bottom of the second business page a story of how the Celtic Tiger owed its existence to foreign direct investment strategies implemented by IDA Ireland according to new research. This showed that IDA Ireland's policy of targeting foreign multinational companies during the 25-year period from 1974 played a major role in transforming the economy.
Obviously a period of roaring economic success. A period of extraordinary renaissance. Dublin and much of the rest of the country had been transformed in the previous 15 years and continued to be transformed.
The emblem of modern Ireland was then the crane. Everywhere one looked in Dublin there were massive hoists on the skyline, further transformations. Inevitably, the boom ended some years afterwards, but those were extraordinary times.
A century and a half earlier, a few fleeting generations earlier, the country had been impoverished. A million people died in a famine, another million emigrated in a few years and over the following century more and more people left, as statehood seemed to have been a failure. And then, the transformation.
In a few brief years, Ireland emerged from its status as a "failed political entity" to a resounding success, for reasons that few understand. Where did they go right? Someone in 3006 might want to explore further the causes of the transformation beyond the claims of the researchers reported on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006. They would find that investment in education over a 40-year period was a major cause, along with the success of the State agency IDA Ireland. They might be prompted to look at taxation strategy during the period and discover that, actually, tax cuts had little enough to do with what happened. The tax cuts of that Government, led by a modest Dubliner in the last years of the second millennium and into the third, occurred after, not before, the economic boom started.
Odd that. And did the State get out of the way to leave the engines of the free market roar? Well, not really. It was the State which provided the education and it was a State agency, IDA Ireland, which attracted the foreign investment.
In that Irish Times of August 22nd, 2006, there was a front page lead headed "Number of unfilled college places to hit new heights". Many of the unfilled places were said to be in science, engineering and computers.
Was this an early indication that the boom was coming to an end, no longer would Ireland provide highly-qualified graduates in the areas most relevant to economic success?
And then a few curious stories that might make an observer in 3006 wonder what were we up to? There apparently was a problem with people getting affordable housing. A Government scheme which required developers to provide 20 per cent of all developments as social and affordable housing was watered down with the result that very few such houses were built at the height of the boom.
Strange that. Could the favouritism shown to property developers explain their apparent success abroad? And further into the newspaper a report that 170 children had been incarcerated in adult prisons in contravention of international treaties.
Also, apparently, massive overcrowding in the country's major jails? Why so many people in jail? Tax offenders?
Still, obviously, no major social problems. At least not according to The Irish Times of that date.
And right at the back of the main newspaper an interview with musician, Finbar Furey who, asked whether he would opt for Ralph Lauren or Lyle and Scott, replied "Wha"? Weird.