We like to show off our new-found wealth, but who’s counting the cost?

Ronan Mullen

One of Shelia's entries concerned an encounter in a Dublin bar which she had been told was 'cool Dublin'.

Sheila found the place charmless. In her blog, she tells of meeting a man called Seamus whose ability to converse was limited to listing his inventory of newly acquired gadgets. "I'm very big on the upgrading. I now have two fully-loaded Mercs with 10-wheel drive and purple-tinted skylights, seat-warmer pads and a talking GPS system " The list, we were told, went on.

Ms O'Malley is keen to let us know that she is not sentimental about the old, poverty-stricken Ireland, but her account of the new, brash Irish, whose sense of self-worth depends entirely on their stock of material possessions, strikes a nerve. Most of us have encountered Seamus, or someone like him, during the last five years.

In a country where the emphasis is increasingly on material success, it is not surprising that more and more people want a piece of the action, and charge for their services accordingly.

RTE's Rip-Off Ireland, hosted by Eddie Hobbs, has highlighted some of the more egregious examples of price-gouging in this country. The programme did the sums using figures that we now take for granted. A cup of coffee costs up to 2.50. One woman drinks four or five coffees each day. That's a tenner spent on coffee alone.

Hobbs also focused on the scuppering, by backbench TDs, of Michael McDowell's plans to bring in café bars. McDowell's proposals would have increased competition in the pub trade and helped to change Irish drink patterns. Hobbs was rightly indignant that special interests could frustrate the workings of the political system in this way. Recent reports suggest that the vast majority of Fianna Fail TDs, including senior ministers such as Brian Cowen and Dermot Ahern, passed on representations to McDowell calling for a rethink on the policy.

Restaurants came in for hard time from Hobbs, who observes that the mark-up on a typical bottle of decent French wine in an eatery can be as much as 340% enough to make anyone sip a little more cautiously. The hospitality industry was outraged at this claim. They labelled it "sensationalist" and argued that the example given was not representative.

Whether or not this example represents the true state of affairs, there appears to be some statistical back-up for the notion that Ireland is becoming dangerously uncompetitive.

"There would still seem to be relatively limited competition in many sectors of the economy, particularly in the services area. Price levels here are high by international standards," the Central Bank noted last autumn.

In June last year, the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, reported that Ireland was the most expensive country in the Eurozone. In October the National Competitiveness Council, the government body set up to report on Ireland's international competitiveness, said that Ireland was virtually on a par with Finland in the Eurozone as Europe's most expensive country.

John O'Donoghue, the minister with responsibility for tourism, is worried about this kind of talk he thinks we shouldn't be 'talking ourselves down'. Rip off Ireland, he assures us, is "largely a myth". But overseas tourists don't agree. Another American writer, Philip Gailey, told the weblog of his consternation on being charged 5 for a Guinness, the equivalent of $7.

How many more feel the same? Travelling around the west this summer, I was surprised and a little worried by how quiet some places were. I wonder if the word has gone out that the quality of the welcome has gone down, and prices have gone up.

We seem to have been worrying about this for a long time. None of the information is new, but we have RTE and Eddie Hobbs to thank for highlighting the issue. The outcry from the public and the howls of protest from restaurateurs suggests that, finally, people may be beginning to take the issue seriously. Last Sunday it was reported that Fianna Fáil TDs are planning to hold a conference to address the issues raised in the programme.

THE problem is, some politicians are tempted to tell special interests what they want to hear. Hence the claim that many of Rip-Off Ireland's concerns are overhyped. One TD moaned that Hobbs wasn't "comparing like with like". He pointed out that the minimum wage here is almost twice what it is in Spain. It's a fact worth noting but not at the expense of recognising that we have a problem which may drive tourists away.

Politicians and businesses have a role to play in making Ireland a more competitive and customer-friendly environment. But we also need to look at ourselves, and ask if our own spending habits are contributing to a high-cost economy. We have begun to invest more and more of our self esteem in buying ever more expensive things, while ostentatiously fretting over it. Like Seamus, the man in the Dublin bar, we may no longer see our purchases as merely useful items, but regard our spending power as an extension of our personalities. Whether it be increasingly sophisticated mobile phones, or expensive frappe latte cappuccinos, our spending has become a way to convince ourselves of a new-found sense of potency as consumers.

This will have an impact on how visitors see us as well. While many Irish people still exhibit a basic politeness towards tourists, there is a new harshness to the way we conduct ourselves. People no longer say 'sorry' to those they brush against on the street. The warmth for which we were once legendary has largely vanished, at least in the big towns and cities.

This isn't merely nostalgia; these traits served us well in the past, and travellers were genuinely impressed by our friendliness. Ireland continues to enjoy some of the legacy of its former hospitality, as I discovered while travelling abroad in recent weeks.

But the hospitality on offer from others for example in Germany has much to teach us, from the quality of service in restaurants to the time-of-day that you get in the street or in people's houses. How long before the word gets out that things have changed in Ireland?

How long before negative publicity about the decline of Irish hospitality and a steep rise in prices, starts to hurt our reputation abroad? I hope it never happens, but happen it will if we don't change our mentality.

The past 10 years have seen enormous change in Ireland, and a lot of it has been for the better. But we are struggling to weld the dynamism and drive of a new and prosperous Ireland with that hospitality towards the stranger which was once a feature of life here, despite the hypocrisy and scandals which we cannot forget either. We must fear for a society that would constantly and ostentatiously celebrate wealth and where the citizens regarded themselves and each other primarily as consumers.