Predicting the future is an absorbing, but rather risky pastime. It was famously - if not apocryphally - predicted in the late 1800s that should the number of carriages on the streets of London continue to grow at the rate then prevalent, the city would be knee deep in horse manure by the early years of the 20th century. The authors of this prediction failed, however, to anticipate the coming of the motor car.
It follows then that the current spate of predictions about the shape of Ireland to come needs to be treated with a deal of caution. It might prove a little premature to add Polish to the school curriculum on the premise that one in five Irish residents will be a migrant by 2020, as predicted this week by NCB Stockbrokers. Equally, if you live by the coast, selling your home in anticipation of a six metre rise in sea levels, also predicted this week by US scientists, could also be a rash move.
That said, any responsible society or government needs to plan ahead and doing so requires a certain amount of informed guesswork about the shape of things to come. Ireland has been remarkably successful in this regard, with a number of far-sighted decisions such as the introduction of free secondary education in the 1960s paying huge dividends. Other examples of forward thinking on a national scale include the 10 per cent tax on manufacturing, which continues to underpin the economy in the form of low-corporation taxes. More recently came the decision to set up a National Pensions Reserve Fund to offset some of the burden of our ageing population. (Although it is worth noting that, should the population continue along the lines predicted by NCB, this fund may well turn out to be superfluous, which rather neatly proves the point about not making too many bets about the future.)
What is clear is that Ireland will change out of all recognition over the next 15 to 20 years. There is little to be gained in speculating about the exact nature of the changes, but there is a growing consensus about a number of trends, most of which are predicated on continued economic growth and foresee a huge expansion of the population. It would be negligent in the extreme if these trends did not inform public policy making and it is reassuring that in some areas, they clearly are being taken into account. The ambitious €34.4 billion Transport 21 infrastructural plan launched last year is, taken at face value, a good example. It is to be hoped we will also be far-sighted enough to see some of the opportunities presented by all this change and take advantage of them.