Book - After the Ball - What is the legacy of the Celtic Tiger? by Fintan O'Toole

Is it the death of communal values? Or the triumph of profit? As a new generation of Irish people are born into a post-boom Ireland, Fintan O'Toole asks if the Celtic Tiger has irrevocably turned both on itself, and its people.

In a series of sharply observed essays, the award winning Irish Times' commentator looks at Ireland's growing notoriety as one of the most globalised yet unequal economies on earth. Why were the boom years haunted by the spectre of a failing health service and widening social inequality? Why did a substantial proportion of our children continue to be marginalized through lack of funding in education? What is the place of people with disabilities, travelers, women and children, immigrants and asylum-seekers, in our brave new land?

Passionate and brave, After the Ball is a wake-up call for a nation in transition, a plea for a strong, active, imaginative public sphere in which all our citizens have the capacity to participate. Irish people like to see Ireland as an exceptional place. In this startling polemic, Fintan O'Toole shatters the illusion once and for all.


To read an extract, please click here.