The need for Ireland to engage with partners in modelling the future macroeconomic policy for Europe and mapping out Ireland’s position within that landscape is by now well understood. Demographic exceptionalism One legacy of the Famine was Ireland’s persistent exceptionalism in demographic statistics – a topic about which I inherited my father’s fascination.
As late as the 1950s, Ireland really stood out for its weak demographic dynamism. Best-known here is the decline in the population of Ireland right up until 1961, when it reached a nadir at about half the pre-Famine level of well over a century before. This was quite exceptional (Figure 1).