Preventing the Future: Why was Ireland so poor for so long?

By Tom Garvin

Between the years of the mid thirties through to 1960, independent Ireland suffered from economic stagnation, and also went through a period of intense cultural and psychological repression. While external circumstances account for much of the stagnation - especially the depression of the thirties and the Second World War - 'Preventing the Future' argues that the situation was aggravated by internal circumstances.

The key domestic factor was the failure to extend higher and technical education and training to larger sections of the population. This derived from political stalemates in a small country which derived in turn from the power of the Catholic Church, the strength of the small-farm community, the ideological wish to preserve an older society and, later, gerontocratic tendencies in the political elites and in society as a whole.

While economic growth did accelerate after 1960, the political stand-off over mass education resulted in large numbers of young people being denied preparation for life in the modern world and, arguably, denied Ireland a sufficient supply of trained labour and educated citizens. Ireland's Celtic Tiger of the nineties was in great part driven by a new and highly educated and technically trained workforce. The political stalemates of the forties and fifties delayed the initial, incomplete take-off until the sixties and resulted in the Tiger arriving nearly a generation later than it might have.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill & Macmillan
• Release date: Aug 24, 2004
• ISBN: 9780717163595

Tom Garvin

Tom Garvin is Emeritus Professor of Politics at University College Dublin and an honorary research fellow at IBIS. His books include Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland (1987), 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy (1996) and Preventing the Future: Why was Ireland so poor for so long? (2004) . He is also the author of many articles and chapters on Irish and comparative politics. He is an alumnus of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has taught at the University of Georgia, Colgate University and Mount Holyoke College. His biography of Seán Lemass, Judging Lemass, was published by the Royal Irish Academy in 2009.

Reviews for Preventing the Future

[thegeneral_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Like Garvin's other books this one is also well researched, written and argued. Initially Garvin indicates that to get to the bottom of identifying why Ireland was so poor for so long it is overtly simplistic to place all the blame on de Valera. However, delving deeper into the book this becomes a common recurring theme of the author in tandem with the stifling self-control of the Catholic Church and a perplexingly almost anti-intellectual peasantry. One interesting point Garvin makes is the impact that Northern Catholics made to Government policy in different eras such as McGilligan, McElligott and MacEntee to name but a few in the economic and social area where they were outsiders to begin with.