The Celtic Tiger

Ireland has been a very poor country, destitute at times. We all know that. Until recent years, its emigration levels have been astronomically high compared to its neighbors, and some statistic has the number of native born or first generation Irish higher in the US than in Ireland. However, the Celtic Tiger took hold and business boomed, construction began, and thousands flocked to Dublin. Dublin is alive and vibrant, proud to be Irish even as the recession deals blow after blow. Although not at the level of dire risk faced by countries like Iceland, experts whose names I don’t know expect the future of Ireland to be bleaker than in many parts of Europe, but the city continues, albeit with fewer tourists, shorter lines at immigrations, and dozens of cabs lined down the street from the Guinness Storehouse, hotels, and night clubs. Because of a relaxing of the laws, Dublin has more cabbies than Manhattan, but more and more people forsake cabs for the cheaper bus fare or walking. Dublin is a small city. I can walk from Trinity College in the city center to either of the large stadiums on the outer edges of the city in forty minutes, maybe less. However, despite financial setbacks, the city continues, determined to hold onto at least an echo of that Celtic roar.

But on the bus to Ikea, passing through lovely neighborhoods with trimmed hedges, fresh paint, large modern churches, one passes into Ballymun, a northern suburb of Dublin and the home of Europe’s Most Successful Neighborhood Rejuvenation Project. The sign that states it is spray painted over in green, black, and red. Just beyond it is a mall that looks to be abandoned but isn’t, and just beyond that, on a dead end street, is a grouping, three maybe, four, of concrete apartment buildings, slabs with cutouts in the shape of doors and windows. As the bus passes, one can see through the stairways opened to the sky, and trash piles of mattresses and cardboard camouflage where house-cement meets road cement.

Scott thought it looked like something from the Eastern cell bloc. Maybe. I can see in it movies from the 1980s depicting the USSR and East Germany. I imagine living there, and it isn’t the type of place you come for a viewing and say, “This feels like home.” You move into those gray walls, and you fight and claw to make it a home, and undoubtedly some people succeed though a great many fail. Where does it fall in the Celtic Tiger? It’s older than the recession, maybe older than the Tiger, and it is a part of the Tiger, left in the droppings and scraps amongst the small parasites all tigers must have. Though these truly bleak buildings may be unique in Western Europe to Ireland, a country that has been so destitute in moments in its history to send such great swaths of its population fleeing elsewhere, anywhere, the concept of these buildings are universal, large and crowded and ever present in the neighborhoods where we chose not to look.