Under Seán Lemass, the government in the period 1959–66 developed industry in Ireland on an unprecedented scale, and the consequences of this policy are still felt to this day. Michael Hartnett remarked that in the 1970s this led to a dismissal with many things connected with traditional Ireland – small farmers, small shops and the Irish language. These were perceived as signs of an unmodern atavism that the country wished to abandon, especially after it joined the European Economic Community in 1973. There was an attendant loosening of the strictures of Catholic morality, spearheaded especially by Gay Byrne's The Late Late Show and a soap opera entitled the Riordans. In the mid 1990s, these developments were galvanised by large in-flows of foreign investment; multinational companies were attracted by the country's well-educated young population and by fiscal policies which maximised their tax-breaks and minimised their long-term responsibilities. In 1994, the investment bankers Morgan Stanley called the phenomenon the ‘Celtic Tiger’.

In his novel, The Very Man (2003), Chris Binchy has his protagonist leave Ireland in the early 1990s and return when the boom is at its height. This is what he sees: