Entrepreneurial, local Irish business is the real employment miracle in Ireland |
For many Irish people, 1990 is remembered as the year of the World Cup quarter finals. Cruelly, Ireland exited the Italia ‘90 competition following a jammy goal from Italian striker Totó Schillaci, but it was such an incredible run: the laughs, the stories, the goals, the penalties and the heroic last game against host nation Italy in their Eternal City.
This week, ahead of the 2026 World Cup qualifying match against Czech Republic on Thursday, the country will be gripped by nostalgia for 1990 (the year we first qualified for the tournament) - those mullets, those shell suits, that breakdancing, the Ford Cortinas, bottles of Satzenbrau and, of course, Charlie Haughey’s imperial post-match lap of honour in Rome, saluting his travelling fans. What an operator!
That year was yet another time of queues outside the US embassy, eventually leading to the Morrison programme. It was an era of mass emigration and double-digit unemployment, in a country where stable jobs were as rare as hen’s teeth. The 1980s had been a jobless decade in Ireland, while employment was plentiful abroad. The boom in our three biggest trading partners, Britain, West Germany and the United States, had up to then passed us by. There was little reason to believe that endemic unemployment would not continue to be the Irish disease. Then, out of the blue, something happened. The Irish economy began to create jobs – and it hasn’t stopped since.
In 1990, total employment in the economy was 1.1 million, slightly up on the 1 million employed in 1950. For four decades, Irish employment levels barely budged while emigration persisted, but between 1990 and 2005, employment expanded to 1.9 million, an increase of 800,000 jobs, or about 72 per cent. GDP expanded at an average of 9.4 per cent annually between 1995 and 2000 – faster than the German and French post-war miracles.
Gerry Adams says civil case ‘verged on show trial’ and ‘should never have been brought’
‘I looked out and the whole glass just went’: two children injured in balcony fall in Waterford
Micheál........