And yes I know that feeling.

Even in the stagnant seventies and depressed eighties there was change in Ireland. The gap-toothed streets of Dublin’s city centre in the 70s were filled with fake Georgian buildings in the 80s. The run down inner-city area designated as a future bus-station in the 70s, blossomed into the ultra-rich social center of Temple Bar in the 80s. In the seventies it regularly took people five hours to drive to Cork from Dublin. By the time I left in 1999, with car ownership doubling every year, and European funds building better roads, the trip to Cork took a lot closer to what 160 miles should take in a car.

Unlike neighbouring Britain, or much of Europe, Ireland never had an Industrial Revolution. As I was growing up it was transitioning from a small open agricultural economy into a service-led one with Tourism first and then I.T. leading the way.

Working in I.T. I witnessed first hand the mass immigration back home of Irish people who had left ten and more years before never expecting to return, and I witnessed the mass immigration for the first time also of foreign nationals into Ireland, which I loved and found tremendously exciting.

Much of the changes that have taken place have definitely altered the fabric of everyday life, but I wouldn’t want them not to happen. Attendance at Catholic churches is down 90%, Dublin now has a tram system, laws have changed with regard to divorce and homosexuality, and much more people seem to have much more money. But the changes are just as much Irish as what went before. In October I enjoyed walking around the Russian and African shops of Dublin, but I did it with the same rain on my eyebrows as I enjoyed for the thirty-three years before I left.

Most days I talk to people in Ireland, and listen to Irish radio, and follow Irish news. And I visit every year, and it is what I see in the ever changing Ireland that I still miss, not what I experienced in my youth.

I was home twice last year and saw more kids playing on the street than I saw the rest of the year here in KC. I miss that. Girls still wear wolly jumpers. I like that. People do get the bus (as well as the Tram and trains). And they talk a lot.

Ultimately my list of what I miss stems from the twin activities of talking and walking. Despite the changes, talking and walking still happens greatly in Ireland by comparison with where I live now, and I do them much more at home in Ireland when I visit than I manage in KC, so it is that I miss them.

I think what has mostly vanished from Ireland is the Ireland that was never there, the Ireland we hear of here every St Patrick’s Day. My urban Dublin, monstrous as it takes over Leinster, and always unromantic, will still be there, as I expect will the long-term unemployed who never went away.

About the only thing that is truly vanishing for me is the chewing gum off the street surfaces, which is probably a good thing.

When we were at the Irish Fest Promoters Conference in Pittsburgh last weekend, we had a talk from Eoin Kennedy from Tourism Ireland. He gave us some really startling facts…for me anyway. Ireland has seen a 94% growth in tourism since 1995. 6% annual increase in GDP, the fastest growing in Europe. 125,000 immigrants into Ireland in the last 3 years. Ireland recently passed the USA to become the number one exporter of software in the world. 53 new hotels built in the last 5 years. All of which makes me wonder how much of the Ireland that you grew up with and remember has or will be drastically changed or even vanished in years to come. Is there such a thing as too much prosperity?