First of two parts
I am just back from an eight-day stay in Ireland. I went there first in the summer of 1970, then again in February 1997. This time, I was asked every day by Irish friends how I thought the country had changed.
No longer can Ireland be described, as it was by author Sean O'Faolain in the 1930s, as "a sleeping country." It has awakened both to the grim realities of its past and to its dynamic potential in the future. But, in 2008, are the stripes fading on the Celtic tiger?