Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all,
Vanilla are planning an update to the site on April 24th (next Wednesday). It is a major PHP8 update which is expected to boost performance across the site. The site will be down from 7pm and it is expected to take about an hour to complete. We appreciate your patience during the update.
Thanks all.

Were the early 90's the last "real" Ireland

2456

Comments

  • #32
    Church on Tuesday
    Registered Users Posts: 3,858 ✭✭✭Church on Tuesday


    3DataModem wrote: »
    Sigh. Everyone thinks the world peaked when they were in their late teens and/or very early 20s.

    Nostalgia is a powerful thing. That's why some people look back at Ireland as some kind of third world country in the early 90s and others think is was some kind of blissful innocent utopia or a coming of age moment, Riverdance and all that :rolleyes:

    No doubt the generation coming up now will think much the same when they enter into their 30s and 40s, apart from the obvious societal advancements, there really won't be all that much of a difference.

    At least back then you could own a home.


  • #33
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭[Deleted User]


    Church on Tuesday wrote: »
    At least back then you could own a home.

    I really think they need to do some research on the nature of capitalist societies.

    How is it that when we were "poor", my dad could go to matches regularly in Croker/Lansdowne, drink a few pints in the pub at the weekend, and still pay a mortgage and a car for the family. He was on a very average salary and my mother didn't work.

    If I was to try and live the same lifestyle I could never afford it.


  • #34
    Ubbquittious
    Registered Users Posts: 6,177 ✭✭✭Ubbquittious


    3DataModem wrote: »
    Sigh. Everyone thinks the world peaked when they were in their late teens and/or very early 20s.


    By the time I got to my late teens I already noticed things had been going downhill for over 10 years.



    When I was very young I noticed people were more friendly and sociable. Everyone kind of crawled into their shell after we went into the 2000s. It's the atomisation of society, this was progressing aleady in the decades before I was born and has done wonders for making the world sh1ttier.



    The internet ""going mainstream"" definitely had a profound effect. In the 90s the internet was like an underground subculture of nerds and a geeky hobby. You had to dial in from this beige box in the corner of the room that wouldn't be switched on every day and it ran up the phone bill.


  • #35
    Andrewf20
    Registered Users Posts: 3,187 ✭✭✭Andrewf20


    1992 felt like the tipping point. Before that was noticeably more poverty and rubbish everywhere (usually plastic bags), derelict buildings all over Dublin and mothers not employed, raising kids at home.


  • #36
    DerekC16
    Registered Users Posts: 183 ✭✭DerekC16


    Andrewf20 wrote: »
    1992 felt like the tipping point. Before that was noticeably more poverty and rubbish everywhere (usually plastic bags), derelict buildings all over Dublin and mothers not employed, raising kids at home.

    Lots of women would love to be able to stay at home and raise their kids but families simply cannot afford it now. It isn't a good thing. We need people to be having more kids.


  • Advertisement
  • #37
    BrianD3
    Registered Users Posts: 8,270 ✭✭✭BrianD3


    Ubbquittious wrote: »
    The internet ""going mainstream"" definitely had a profound effect. In the 90s the internet was like an underground subculture of nerds and a geeky hobby. You had to dial in from this beige box in the corner of the room that wouldn't be switched on every day and it ran up the phone bill.
    I first heard of the internet in 1992 or 1993 - a lad in school wrote an essay about it and how it would change the world. Essay was read out in class, I don't recall if he even used the terms "internet" or "world wide web" but that is what it was about. At the time, I thought it sounded like a load of bollocks and didn't give it a second thought. That lad is is now a very successful software developer and I was just slightly off with my dismissal of it :)

    The first time I heard of someone having an internet connection at home was in 1995, a girl I knew from a rich family in South Dublin had it.

    Based on this I'd say:
    pre 1995 - geeks
    1995-1997 - early adopters
    1998 - 2005 - going mainstream and resulting in profound changes and arguably great improvements in society


  • #38
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭[Deleted User]


    BrianD3 wrote: »
    I first heard of the internet in 1992 or 1993 - a lad in school wrote an essay about it and how it would change the world. Essay was read out in class, I don't recall if he even used the terms "internet" or "world wide web" but that is what it was about. At the time, I thought it sounded like a load of bollocks and didn't give it a second thought. That lad is is now a very successful software developer and I was just slightly off with my dismissal of it :)

    The first time I heard of someone having an internet connection at home was in 1995, a girl I knew from a rich family in South Dublin had it.

    Based on this I'd say:
    pre 1995 - geeks
    1995-1997 - early adopters
    1998 - 2005 - going mainstream and resulting in profound changes and arguably great improvements in society

    That's a very accurate summation there. We got it in 1998/99. "Wireless" i.e. WIFI became mainstream around 2007/2008 from memory


  • #39
    Floppybits
    Registered Users Posts: 7,524 ✭✭✭Floppybits


    murpho999 wrote: »
    No it wasn't. I grew up in the 80s and it was a great place.

    Ireland has a lot of positives and its not always about economies.

    Have to agree. I grew up in the 80's and yes the country was in bad shape in terms of employment and dereliction but as a kid it was a great place to grow up. It all depends on what age you were at that time, kids like myself would not have known the plight the country was in and it seemed every other family was in the same boat so there was no difference but if you were a young adult or Adult at that time it was a kip where the only option was either the Boat over to the UK or a plane to the USA. Euro 88 and Italia 90 did give the country a lift. It put us on the map and we were happy to admit to being Irish.

    I left school in 1992 and it wasn't great then in terms of prospects but for going out it was great. There wasn't much choice for us coming out of school it was either stay on in University or do a course, get an apprenticeship or go into FAS, yes there were a load of doss course in there but there were some good ones as well. Then in 1995 things began to take off and I remember between then and 2007 people would be leaving jobs because company x was paying better than company y.


  • #40
    silliussoddius
    Registered Users Posts: 3,705 ✭✭✭silliussoddius


    I finished the leaving in 1995, I was lucky enough to have a local company where I could get a job before going to college. I think it was around that time that free third level education had been introduced which helped a lot of people go to college.
    My tuppence from the time seems to be that from maybe 96 onwards there seemed to be a boom in commercial property development for a few years, then maybe from 99 onwards an IT boom that lasted a few years, somewhere in here there was a growth in office jobs due to lower tax rates and emerging educated work force, 2002/3 the residential building boom took off. It was this boom that went all bubbly and saw the nations collective head disappear up it's ass from around late 04 onwards.


  • #41
    Shebean
    Registered Users Posts: 1,324 ✭✭✭Shebean


    Giblet wrote: »
    Just finished watching Colm Meaney's first episode of his new series, revisiting his old Barrytown movies with Roddy Doyle, and I can't help but feel an sense of working class optimism that prevailed during that period, from the late 80's to the 90's. We had just come off of Italia 90, The Commitments had opened to huge success, and we won a string of Eurovisions and capped it all off with a great showing in USA '94 leading into facing England in the RDS, Steve Collins and finishing with the Good Friday Agreement in 98. Far away from the Ghost Estates, Failed Banks, and Bertie's bets on horses. I had just finished DOOM, but yet, it was on it's way.

    Is that the Ireland we all remember? Is it dead and buried, with Haughey.. in the grave.


    Louis Walsh buried the Eurovision. He managed Johnny Logan and had boy bands so he took over.


    Don't fret. We'll have good music and good sports people again and certainly crooked nation destroying Fianna Fail governments.

    Was playing Shadow Warrior on dial up in '95 :)


  • Advertisement
  • #42
    Andrewf20
    Registered Users Posts: 3,187 ✭✭✭Andrewf20


    DerekC16 wrote: »
    Lots of women would love to be able to stay at home and raise their kids but families simply cannot afford it now. It isn't a good thing. We need people to be having more kids.

    I think alot of women wanted to work as well, but then it became a case of women needing to work due to insane acceleration of housing costs. My take on it is that this was what fueled house prices rising.


  • #43
    B2021M
    Registered Users Posts: 511 ✭✭✭B2021M


    BrianD3 wrote: »
    I first heard of the internet in 1992 or 1993 - a lad in school wrote an essay about it and how it would change the world. Essay was read out in class, I don't recall if he even used the terms "internet" or "world wide web" but that is what it was about. At the time, I thought it sounded like a load of bollocks and didn't give it a second thought. That lad is is now a very successful software developer and I was just slightly off with my dismissal of it :)

    The first time I heard of someone having an internet connection at home was in 1995, a girl I knew from a rich family in South Dublin had it.

    Based on this I'd say:
    pre 1995 - geeks
    1995-1997 - early adopters
    1998 - 2005 - going mainstream and resulting in profound changes and arguably great improvements in society

    Good summary.

    Part of me thinks we havent seen anything yet....robotics and the 'internet of things' will be an even more dramatic change.


  • #44
    ILoveYourVibes
    Registered Users Posts: 15,176 ✭✭✭✭ILoveYourVibes


    Giblet wrote: »
    I can't help but feel an sense of working class optimism


    I think people actually thought Ireland was doomed at the time.


  • #45
    Dyr
    Registered Users Posts: 23,246 ✭✭✭✭Dyr


    I think Tommy Tiernan said about the 80's "it was socially acceptable to do nothing" that was true right up to mid 90s, there was nothing happening. It was all kinda anarchic. You just kinda made your own amusement, knacker drinking two litres and gigs. Youth cultures were huge. The amount of total misfits and oddballs I knew back then who were never gonna do anything with themselves was huge. I don't think we really produce that many loolahs now.


  • #46
    Ubbquittious
    Registered Users Posts: 6,177 ✭✭✭Ubbquittious


    Bambi wrote: »
    I think Tommy Tiernan said about the 80's "it was socially acceptable to do nothing" that was true right up to mid 90s, there was nothing happening. It was all kinda anarchic. You just kinda made your own amusement, knacker drinking two litres and gigs. Youth cultures were huge. The amount of total misfits and oddballs I knew back then who were never gonna do anything with themselves was huge. I don't think we really produce that many loolahs now.


    They're still around but they're all safely stored away in social housing watching netflix or playing play station and ordering every meal on Just Eat. No need to leave the house anymore

    Soon there will be way more people like that. The stigma will disappear when they bring in Universal basic income. So you'll have the unemployed, the billionaires roaming across the world in their superyachts and the robots who do all the actual work.


  • #47
    Peter Flynt
    Registered Users Posts: 2,812 ✭✭✭Peter Flynt


    Giblet wrote: »
    a great showing in USA '94 .....

    We lost 2 of the 4 matches, scoring just twice.


  • #48
    riclad
    Registered Users Posts: 8,184 ✭✭✭riclad


    It,s a new world now , everyone has smartphones, theres apps and youtube,streaming tv ,games consoles.
    the consoles we had in the 90s were pretty basic ,
    multiplayer involved seating on a couch playing against someone else in the same room.
    i think the 90s were great for irish music, we had the corrs, the commitments ,
    Apart from u2 we do not seem to get any good irish pop groups that cross over into america or the uk.
    a few people had the internet using slow modems before broadband became avaidable.
    the internet was just for tech nerds .


  • #49
    Mad_maxx
    Registered Users Posts: 13,505 ✭✭✭✭Mad_maxx


    BrianD3 wrote: »
    I first heard of the internet in 1992 or 1993 - a lad in school wrote an essay about it and how it would change the world. Essay was read out in class, I don't recall if he even used the terms "internet" or "world wide web" but that is what it was about. At the time, I thought it sounded like a load of bollocks and didn't give it a second thought. That lad is is now a very successful software developer and I was just slightly off with my dismissal of it :)

    The first time I heard of someone having an internet connection at home was in 1995, a girl I knew from a rich family in South Dublin had it.

    Based on this I'd say:
    pre 1995 - geeks
    1995-1997 - early adopters
    1998 - 2005 - going mainstream and resulting in profound changes and arguably great improvements in society

    I didnt hear about the internet until around 1995 , I remember all the hype around Windows 95 , We didnt get the internet until early 1999 , I didnt get my first mobile phone until i was Twenty two in 1999 , granted i held out quite a while


  • #50
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭[Deleted User]


    Peter Flynt wrote: »
    We lost 2 of the 4 matches, scoring just twice.

    You could say that we were the only team to beat Italy in that World Cup. Brazil only beat them on penalties......in the final.


  • #51
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭[Deleted User]


    Ubbquittious wrote: »
    They're still around but they're all safely stored away in social housing watching netflix or playing play station and ordering every meal on Just Eat. No need to leave the house anymore

    This is very true. When I was a teenager I always remember the dread of having to walk past a group of teenagers just "hanging around" the area. You just don't really see "gangs" just hanging around any more. Everyone is distracted with some purpose or another. Probably a change for the better all things considered.


  • Advertisement
  • #52
    Sunny Disposition
    Registered Users Posts: 2,699 ✭✭✭Sunny Disposition


    It was a different time, and, oddly because there were a lot of awful things, it was better in quite a lot of ways too.
    The awful things are obvious enough, power of the church, weak economy, and more than anything an awful fear of being different, homophobia was rampant in the early 90s.
    On the more positive side, there was a distinctive Irish culture still around, things are far more homogenised now. Strange to say, but people were a bit more stoic then, there was more of an attitude of getting on with it, now I know that's not always a good thing, but I do think people could cope a lot better then than now.
    In general community was an awful lot stronger then. It kind of declined during the boom years, because so many people moved a lot, there was a huge amount of new houses built and older ties weren't as relevant.
    Neither time was better than the other when I think about it, which seems strange in a way because we have so much more now and we are very familiar with the negative aspects of the past. But overall I don't think happiness in Ireland has increased very much in 30 years, despite it being a softer and more inclusive place now.


  • #53
    The J Stands for Jay
    Registered Users Posts: 5,645 ✭✭✭The J Stands for Jay


    Peter Flynt wrote: »
    We lost 2 of the 4 matches, scoring just twice.

    Italia 90, quarter finals without winning a match, can't remember how many goals scored, but not fat off 2.


  • #54
    The J Stands for Jay
    Registered Users Posts: 5,645 ✭✭✭The J Stands for Jay


    riclad wrote: »
    i think the 90s were great for irish music, we had the corrs, the commitments.

    First part of the sentence does not agree with second part.


  • #55
    s8n
    Registered Users Posts: 3,832 ✭✭✭s8n


    DerekC16 wrote: »
    Bring back Xtravision.

    Such a dumb thing to propose, why ??


  • #56
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭[Deleted User]


    1995 to 2005 or so was the best period. Prosperity, hope, no smartphones and woke nonsense was dismissed. This time was a good mix of tradition and modernity.

    You could still make a mistake without being "cancelled" and did not have to worry about a video being put online for all to condemn you from on high.

    I know a guy who had a meltdown and said some terrible things to a random woman working in a local shop. He had buried his mam a few days before and was not handling it well. This was explained, and he went back a few weeks later and said sorry. Everything ended ok. If it happened today his meltdown would be recorded, put on the internet, he would lose his job and he would probably end up on suicide watch.


  • #57
    Sunny Disposition
    Registered Users Posts: 2,699 ✭✭✭Sunny Disposition


    Watched the Barrytown programme last night, a fella interviewed on the street said he wished things now were like they were at that time. It seems crazy, we would have loved to have the choices available to us now back then. But the more I think about it the less gap there is in happiness, life was an awful lot simpler then, despite all the problems we had.
    This thread has me depressed, more and more I'm worrying things are going in the wrong direction. Even when it comes to the church, Roddy Doyle said a scene in the Commitments was unrealistic because a young fella wouldn't be going to confession at that time. Things possibly weren't as bad as they seem, plus some of the advances are giving rise to a whole host of new problems. For example hackers couldn't have wreaked havoc on the country's health system as easily in 1990, cos the system didn't depend on it so much. Apartments and houses are built to a higher spec now, but prices in Dublin are actually unaffordable for the majority of people, which definitely is a massive social regression.
    I think the latter years of the Celtic Tiger and the recession were difficult years in many ways for Paddy, we had started to come on a bit again before the pandemic. Our politics reflects this a bit, FF and FG are being rejected, while in 2020 SF got the best result possibly since independence for an irish socialist party.


  • #58
    SortingYouOut
    Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭SortingYouOut


    Everyone's "real" Ireland will occur in their lifetime, probably in it's prime. It's not uncommon for people to reminisce about the good days gone but in 50 years time, people will still be doing the same. Everyone thinks their lifetime was the last of the good old days.

    Beverly Hills, California



  • #59
    Sunny Disposition
    Registered Users Posts: 2,699 ✭✭✭Sunny Disposition


    SortingYouOut wrote: »
    Everyone's "real" Ireland will occur in their lifetime, probably in it's prime. It's not uncommon for people to reminisce about the good days gone but in 50 years time, people will still be doing the same. Everyone thinks their lifetime was the last of the good old days.

    There's a bit of truth to that, but I think it is more complicated. The 90s were far better than the 70s in my opinion, but I do think the 60s were better than the 70s.
    There are changes that suit certain people and not others. Definitely anyone who is very laid back would have been more in tune with the time of the Barrytown trilogy, the pace of life in Ireland was extremely relaxed. Remember being constantly surprised when I came back from London to find nothing started on time, people routinely showed up very late. That's all changed now, things are way more organised, which is great for a lot of people.
    Use of the internet has been a huge change too, and for a long time it had been leaving older people behind, but I think that has changed to some extent over the last three or four years. But definitely the rise of digital media was unsettling for a lot of people also, while others loved it from the start.


  • #60
    crooked cockney villain
    Registered Users Posts: 583 ✭✭✭crooked cockney villain


    Wojtek the Bear wrote: »
    I really think they need to do some research on the nature of capitalist societies.

    How is it that when we were "poor", my dad could go to matches regularly in Croker/Lansdowne, drink a few pints in the pub at the weekend, and still pay a mortgage and a car for the family. He was on a very average salary and my mother didn't work.

    If I was to try and live the same lifestyle I could never afford it.

    Some would argue 80's Dad wasn't paying for

    - internet
    - a sky package beyond a paltry few quid for Cablelink
    - Netflix
    - family members addicted to buying rubbish online that is more expensive than the shops
    - two or three mobile subs for the kids
    - the kids had one games console. Now it's two tablets, a console, a laptop or two etc etc.
    - wasn't getting a chicken fillet roll and a few cups of 3 quid coffee in a working day
    - running two cars
    - kids activities to be paid for. Kids today have a gazillion classes and clubs available to join. In the 80s and 90s it was football, Gah and maybe boxing (and down the sticks, probably just GAA). For girls, Irish Dance and little else.
    - going on holiday more than once every three years
    - maybe had a chipper once a week, maybe went on a jaunt to McDonalds in town with the kids once a month or less. Today your average family lives within 10 minutes of McDonald's, BK, KFC and about 40 chippers, Chinese and pizza joints

    While an 80s one salary family did stretch further than today, today's family has lots of smaller expenses that are regarded as essential treats for modern satisfaction. One car, fast food once a week at best, one phone bill, entertainment was one video rental a week, etc etc.


  • Advertisement
  • #61
    Danno
    Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Andrewf20 wrote: »
    I think alot of women wanted to work as well, but then it became a case of women needing to work due to insane acceleration of housing costs. My take on it is that this was what fueled house prices rising.

    It had a part to play alright, including more and more common marriage breakups where one household became two.

    But the real driver of house price increases were caused by inward migration, Ireland simply never had the housing stock for the influx from abroad. This is still true to this day with more people arriving than leaving.


Advertisement