The Republic’s referendums and constitutional change of the 1990s took place during heady economic performance, enviable to the rest of the world, and extraordinary in its speed. The Economist surveyed the Republic in 1988:

Nine years later the Economist wrote:

In 2008 Ireland once more had to face up to the consequence of borrowing. By then, the country’s wealth-creating ability had increased beyond anything imagined in 1988. Ireland had become another country.

By 2000, the Republic was the principal base for American companies in Europe. Its very favourable corporate tax regime (12.5 per cent) hosted twelve of the US’s top twenty electronic companies and the top ten pharmaceutical companies. All the Viagra tablets in the world came from Pfizer in co. Cork. Between 1988 and 2000, GNP growth had been compounding at an average of over 5 per cent every year. The country, with less than 1 per cent of Europe’s population, attracted about 25 per cent of all US investment in Europe. Employment grew by over 400,000; national debt halved. Unemployment decreased to an historic low of 3.6 per cent in 2001. The country had become what Kevin Gardiner, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, in 1994 termed a ‘Celtic tiger’, making a comparison with the rapid growth of the Asian ‘tigers’ a decade earlier.