Only 4 per cent of children from manual labour backgrounds will receive five honours in this year's Leaving Certificate examination while 58 per cent of those from professional backgrounds will do so, according to Dr Tom Collins, of NUI Maynooth.
He was speaking yesterday at the Parnell Summer School in Avondale, Co Wicklow, on the theme "Regions of Ireland - Rich and Poor". His thesis was that poverty does not have a spatial/geographic source.
The notion of Ireland as a failed political entity, as illustrated in Prof J.J. Lee's book Modern Ireland 1912-1985, had had to be discarded, he said. Only in the last 10 years had it been realised that Ireland was now successful. It was something we did not understand, nor did we understand the obligations this had brought in its wake, such as those towards social inclusion.
What was being experienced here now was "the negation of a long-established history of lamentation and the strong tradition that all our songs are sad," he said. Such success meant "we won't be liked much longer".
There had also, and suddenly, been a shift in our attitudes to the west of Ireland. For 150 years we had been turning our backs on the Atlantic. The west was equated with death and decay: now it was being seen as "the centre of Ireland - where Ireland was invented - from Dingle to Ennis to Galway to Westport".
"We have become concerned that the principles of modernism should be challenged. I believe that in modern Ireland isolation is a virtue, space is a scarce commodity.
"People of wealth tend to maximise space. Yet in a 40-to-60-mile zone around Dublin the biggest concern is housing density," he said.
"The new challenge is no longer to promote growth, but managing it and redefining what is good in it."
He warned against the danger of new technology and mass tourism "combining, under the heading of development, to displace those it is intended to serve: our poor regions are now our most desirable," he said.
Ms Marian Harkin, of the Council for the West, said that at the end of 1997 there were more than 240 fewer jobs in the Border region in IDA-backed companies than four years earlier, at a time when between 8,000 and 10,000 jobs were being created nationally.
It was estimated that just over 10 per cent of farms in Mayo and Roscommon would be viable full-time in the future. Meanwhile, between 1981 and 1996, the population of Roscommon had dropped by 4.88 per cent. Now was the time for the Government to deliver on regional development, if it was serious about doing so, "but I am not convinced at all that it will happen", she said.
Mr Odran Reid, of the North Dublin Development Commission, said the "debates in the 1960s and 1970s on inequality and poor income distribution fade into insignificance in the light of the enormous differences that now exist between the poor and the wealthy. Unfortunately, the debate no longer rages."
Poverty in a wealthy society was not only unnecessary, it was criminal. Planned and appropriate investment must be encouraged throughout Ireland, he said, with good infrastructure critical. "We have to clearly state that the elimination of poor areas and poverty will become a national priority for the next decade."
The Irish Times columnist John Waters spoke of the series of mysteries which surrounded the performance of the Irish economy. It was easier to provide an analysis of the State's socio-economic performance 10 years ago when it was a case of "the more pessimistic the better". Even now, however, his native Co Roscommon, "at the heart of Ireland", continued to defy the most optimistic trends in the Irish economy.
"If the heart is not healthy, what can you say about the rest of the body?" he asked. He wondered at the mystery of why people chose to live in crowded Ballyfermot and Neilstown rather than a place of beauty, such as Roscommon, and remarked on the "disimproving quality of life" in urban areas. "It's almost as if some sort of metaphysical bad weather is affecting Irish thinking," he said.
