Introduction: Thinking about Ireland’s Future, Then and Now

Abstract

Introduction: Thinking about Ireland’s Future, Then and Now Philipp W. Rosemann (bio) What would we like Ireland to look like in 2030? In what kind of society do we want to live, on both sides of the border? This seems like a simple question. 2030 is just seven years away, so surely politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and the general public are busy imagining our future. But this is not really happening. Initiatives like Project Ireland 2040, a national development plan for the Republic of Ireland, have in the past several years been overshadowed by emergencies that have demanded all our attention: climate change, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine.1 These emergencies have forced us to into a reactive, crisis-response mode. There is a sense that events are unfolding so fast that we can hardly keep up. This raises the question: Are we still shaping our future or are we merely adapting, breathlessly, to the rapid changes that characterize life in the twenty-first century? On four Wednesdays in May 2022, the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) organized four seminars under the title ‘Ireland 2030’ in order to provide a forum for thinking about ways in which meaningful human agency can be regained, specifically on the island of Ireland and in a time of globally accelerated change. Under the auspices of two RIA committees – the Committee on Ethical, Political, Legal, and Philosophical Studies and Coiste Léann na Gaeilge, Litríocht na Gaeilge agus na gCultúr Ceilteach – each Wednesday four scholars and engaged citizens met with an online audience to discuss the future of Ireland.2 Although each of the seminars was devoted to a different topic, the effects of economic and technological progress on life in this island provided the guiding thread. For this issue of Studies, six of the panellists from the Academy’s Ireland 2030 initiative have agreed to revise their presentations. Before providing a brief overview of the papers, I would by way of introduction like to offer some reflections on what thinking about the future means. How does one approach the task? Does one imagine the future as an extension of the present, and thus [End Page 9] attempt to extrapolate from the present to times yet to come? Or is thinking about the future a matter of imagining, more or less realistically, some ideal state that one will subsequently endeavour to bring about? Also, is there a relationship not only between the present and the future, but also between the future and the past? ________ No doubt the twentieth century’s most famous attempt to articulate a coherent vision of the future of Ireland, and to do so in a politically effective way, is the speech that An Taoiseach Éamon de Valera recorded for St Patrick’s Day, 1943.3 Or should I have said ‘infamous attempt’? For many have regarded this speech as epitomizing a backward attitude which, rather than promoting a promising future, in fact ended up preventing it. This is, for instance, the argument in Tom Garvin’s influential book, Preventing the Future: Why Was Ireland So Poor for So Long?4 The historian Joe Lee (who defended the speech) once remarked that de Valera’s ‘vision […] is usually invoked nowadays only in mockery of the image of “comely maidens dancing at the crossroads”’.5 There is a twofold problem with such mockery. The first, smaller one, concerns the fact that de Valera never uttered the phrase in question.6 The second, much more significant problem, is that de Valera’s critics hardly ever appear to have read the speech in its entirety, and thus to have endeavoured to understand the argument that it advances. Garvin exemplifies this attitude of hasty dismissiveness: having quoted the speech’s most famous paragraph (and nothing else from its three pages), he proceeds to accuse de Valera of pursuing ‘an extremely focused short-term purpose’ and engaging in ‘political opportunism’.7 He does so after expressing surprise that the speech ‘was not found to be irrelevant or even comic’.8 I want to suggest here that a reappraisal may be in order. More than previous generations, we are able to...