Some recent demographic developments in Ireland.

Abstract

High emigration and a familial, rural culture, isolationist and Roman Catholic in inspiration and practice, were central features of the Irish social landscape between the Famine and the Fifties. Since the 1960s, however, a social revolution has occurred. Irish marriage and fertility patterns have changed rapidly. The hegemonic rural discourse has all but disappeared and the influence of fundamentalist Catholic thinking on Irish society has weakened gready. Irish emigration continues, but the options chosen are more varied, and many return. Both return and first-time immigrants are beginning to have an impact, modest as yet, on Irish society. Irish demography is no longer as exceptional in European or world terms as it once was. It is the timing and rapidity of the Irish demographic transition, rather than its content, which is remarkable.