The exceptional speed of Ireland's transformation in ther last decade renders much of the preceding corpus of writing moot. In 1992 No-one could have predicted that there would be growth figures of 8% through much of the nineties and early 21st century. Thus I'm refreshing myfacts with a bit of furrowing through two recently published works:

The Transformation of Ireland, Diarmaid Ferriter, London, 2004.Preventing the Future, Why was ireland so poor for so long?, Tom Garvin, Dublin 2004.

Hopefully Cork University Press are still producing their epistle series "Undercurrents" which excelled as a sort of "nutshell" snapshot of social policy with a decent criticval cut.

Other suggestions are solicited.....