Irish prosperity has its downside

Ask Dublin taxi driver Christie MacMannon what he thinks about the traffic he finds himself snarled in for hours on end, and he tells you in one word: "Horrendous."

Owning a car, which until recently was just a dream for most people here, "is a bit of a status symbol now," Mr. Macmannon explains. "You get a bit of education, you go off and work for one of these multinationals where they pay you reasonably well, and you buy a car."

A decade of record growth, fueled by a boom in foreign investment in high-tech industries, has brought unprecedented prosperity to Ireland.

The economy has grown by an average of 9 percent a year for the past 10 years and earned Ireland the sobriquet "Celtic Tiger." Unemployment is down to nothing, and the government has promised tax cuts and wage increases that will see everybody's income jump by another 25 percent over the next three years.

"But for all the economic progress that's been made, it's not matched by the feel-good factor," says Patrick Delaney, head of Ireland's Small Firms Association. Some people, he adds, are even beginning to wonder whether it has all been worth it.

"We've been caught unawares by the rapidity of the growth surge we've had," explains Daniel McCoy, an economist at Ireland's top think tank. "There's a price to pay ... and we've just been killing ourselves in terms of quality of life."

Dublin commuters have plenty of time to add up that price as they sit in traffic jams that were unknown a few years ago. They pay it too in their home mortgages. They worry that an influx of foreign workers will test traditional Irish hospitality. And they are afraid that a tide of consumerism will drown their old values.

The gridlock in Dublin is the most visible of these perils. More people are going to work, public transport cannot cope with the new numbers, there are nearly 50 percent more cars on the roads than there were nine years ago, but few roads have been widened or new ones built.

Dublin's director of traffic Owen Keegan describes his job, only half-jokingly, as "managing the speed of the descent into total chaos," rather than implementing solutions. The government development plan has earmarked $42 billion to build new infrastructure over the next five years, but existing projects are way behind schedule, Mr. Keegan says.

"Everyone wants improved transport infrastructure" such as a new light railway that is on the drawing board, "but everyone reserves the right not to have it built near their homes," Keegan adds. "The traffic situation will get a lot worse before it gets better."

Not only are more people going to work, but they are having to travel farther, because home prices in convenient locations have gone through the roof. The price of the average house in the Dublin area has doubled over the past five years to more than $180,000, beyond the reach of most first-time buyers. This hurts especially hard in a country where 4 families out of 5 have traditionally owned their own homes.

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