Commentary: the absence of debate about how we should handle our transition to a multiracial society is regretted by Paul Cullen
People - ordinary people, you and me - created the Irish boom, so how stands Ireland's human capital now that the halcyon days are over? As we are constantly reminded, more Irish people are at work than ever before. The numbers living in absolute poverty are correspondingly down.
The workforce is also more educated, more widely travelled and, by and large, more prosperous than all previous generations. More women are working, and some are catching up on the incomes of their male colleagues.
But if this is so, how come there is such widespread dissatisfaction with the way we live now? Why do we feel so insecure in our position at the front of the international financial rollercoaster? Why are so many of the issues that will dominate the forthcoming election, such as health, planning and traffic, driven by a feeling that we haven't got things right? One of the ironies of our economic success over recent years is that the average citizen feels less in control of his or her destiny than before.
Wealth has not brought with it a commensurate sense of being empowered. Ireland Inc careers along a path of maximum growth, preening itself on being the A1 student among international economies, but seldom stopping to take stock or plan the way ahead.
Most people are genuinely glad to kiss goodbye to the days of high unemployment and forced emigration. When I finished college in 1985, my entire engineering class emigrated to Germany, Holland and the US. This kind of haemorrhaging is thankfully at an end.
But now that the pattern of centuries has been reversed, and Ireland has changed from being a country of emigration to one of immigration, we are presented with a new set of challenges.
Inequalities are more glaring than ever. The boom may have lifted all boats, but many a small vessel risks capsizing in the wake of the gleaming ships owned by the wealthiest in our society.
And what about quality of life? Those of us at work spend longer in the office than ever before. We spend longer getting to and from the office, thanks to the fact that more of us have cars.
Many of us live farther from work than we used to, because houses in the big cities have become so expensive. Two-income families spend huge sums on childcare bills. It often seems like we're running to stand still.
Our recent growth was powered by the flexibility offered by the twentysomethings who form the dominant demographic group in Irish society.
But as these bright young things mature and approach the years of nest-making and child-bearing, for how much longer can we count on this flexibility?
Immigration has been good for the country. Highly qualified newcomers have plugged the skills gaps in the economy, and done the jobs that Irish people no longer want to do. The fabric of society is woven with a new diversity that is plain to see.
Yet our immigration policy has been haphazard and ad hoc. We still seem to be bemused by the fact that other people want to live here. We know that as a late starter we have the chance to avoid the mistakes made in other countries, but don't seem to know how to achieve this. Migration is still driven by the impulses of individual asylum-seekers/economic migrants and the thirst of employers for cheap labour.
But as US congressman Bruce Morrison pointed out last year, immigrant labour is not like a tap, to be turned on and off as required. Immigration policy requires management, and getting people to leave is the hardest part.
So the decisions we make now will have a huge bearing on the kind of society that evolves in 10 or 20 years' time. Ireland is inevitably becoming a multiracial society, but the speed and extent of this process is one we can and should determine.
We can also determine the extent to which different cultures integrate, so that we create a genuine multiracial society and not one in which various groups live in parallel. You only have to look at Germany and its guest workers to see the dangers of this kind of separate development.
The asylum issue has frequently been confused with the broader issue of immigration, often by those who sought deliberately to muddy the waters. But asylum is a human rights issue and has nothing to do with the performance of the economy or the demands of employers.
FIVE years of the outgoing Government have seen massive changes in the handling of asylum claims. In 1997 the number of applicants stood at under 4,000; over the past few years the annual total has been about three times that figure. This in spite of the imposition of a raft of new controls and regulations.
Under the Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, the State is on its way to putting in place the full apparatus of a modern asylum claims system.
Critics might complain that the system is not as independent as claimed, and the Department still hasn't met its targets for dealing with applications within six months. But no other part of the Civil Service has seen such massive change in such a short time. Staff have increased from 22 in 1997 to almost 700 today.
Messy, even tragic questions remain; what to do with Irish-born children if their parents are deported, for example? Why is it that most asylum-seekers come from just two countries, Nigeria and Romania? When is Ireland going to play its part internationally by resettling some of those refugees most at risk around the world?
Most Irish people want to extend a welcome to the new wave of immigrants, but have genuine concerns about aspects of the phenomenon. Pity, then, that the debate has been left to extremists on both sides, and is unlikely to feature prominently in the forthcoming election campaign.
Paul Cullen is an Irish Times journalist