The Ireland Dispatches

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Galway’s streets are torn up. They’re laying new water mains and, I can only presume, fibre optic cable. From new office complexes to new stone walls, construction is everywhere. Housing prices in Galway exceed Seattle’s. There’s a bypass being built around Ennis, so that the nominal 1 hour trip from Shannon airport to Galway might take less than the typical 2 ½ hours it does now. But 5000 cars have been sold in Galway since the beginning of the year, and they haven’t make any more road to put those cars. It’s getting harder and harder to drive around this country.

Ireland is in boom times. In a delicious irony that’s surely not lost on the Irish, English laborers are crossing the Irish sea to find work. Projections are for an additional 200,000 workers needed in the next 7 years if Ireland is to maintain its growth rate. That’s 200,000 more than what the Irish population can supply. Ireland is on the brink of profound change.

Traditional pessimism abounds. A woman at the Carraroe coral beach had binoculars, which led me for a moment to hope that she could help me puzzle out a pipit that I saw. "Oh no, I’m not keen on the birds, I wish I were though." She’s sure a depression is around the corner. "Ireland’s changed so much, just in the last 5 years. It can’t last. It’s got to crash." At the pub where I took lunch, a woman watched a technology report on Sky News TV. "It’s like the wheel, technology is going to change everything." Her sour expression suggested that this was not a good idea. The country is paralyzed at the moment, as the boom times have failed to trickle down to the bus and train workers, who have all walked off the job demanding more pay. I’ve yet to visit this country when some sector or other wasn’t on strike.

But the Internet boom is crashing over the island nonetheless. "They’re about 2 years behind the States," says my friend Tracey, who is stymied by how internet ignorant here clients are, even though they’re ostensibly E-commerce clients. Free internet access is now commonplace (however the local phone service is measured). I came back from last night’s dance (where people remembered me from last October) to find Alex deeply engrossed in a Battle.net game (29,000 people were logged on), building spaceports and fighter craft before his opponents could nail him. Who are you playing with, I asked. "Oh, someone from New Jersey, and, let’s look here, there’s someone else from Beijing."

29 March 2000