Is Ireland on the cusp of a new boom?

DEFICITS are falling, employment rising, pints are €8 — we must be getting a new boom. It’ll need a name, I suppose. Let’s hope it’s a good name or at least better than the last one.

The Celtic Tiger was one of the most annoying phrases coined. Nothing against tigers, they are wonderful animals in danger of becoming extinct because of human greed, hubris and ignorance so a perfect name for our last economy. But we’re not really tigers. We don’t lie in wait for ages and then pounce majestically on the unsuspecting muntjac deer. We are more reactive and awkward, like a bullock. As for Celtic, the word evokes an image of overpaying for something poor quality that’s not even that Irish — again quite apt for the last decade — but we’re not Celtic. Our blood is more English or Iberian — if you want to get grandiose, call us the Milesians.

The Milesian Bullock is definitely on the rampage though, if one key indicator is to be believed: the presence of w*nky billboards advertising property developments. Remember them? Photographs of the kind of people who were going to be your neighbours — a good-looking man whose hair is slightly flecked with grey, a sexy woman eating an asparagus suggestively? Surely you recall ‘Gorgeous Living Comes to Dublin’ which showed various unhappy people in some sort of post-coital pout, one disturbingly involving strawberries. For a flat that was in Coolock.

Well they’re back. Not as bad, but getting there. I saw a billboard recently which said “Experience The Extraordinary”. There were photos of thin and melancholy models wandering rather wistfully around an apartment. As buildings go, it seemed fairly conventional. Truly extraordinary living would be an apartment where you can dance on the ceiling, Lionel Richie style, or sleep in the bin. I know it’s all advertising hyperbole but if you’re going to hype your er .. bolic ... why not go all out like the shop in Dublin which proclaims itself to be Europe’s Number One Discount store?

So the boom is coming back but how are we to behave? For a start, do we have the right calibre of twenty-somethings to fall for it like the last ones did? After seven years of recession, anyone under 30 is an embittered old-timer. Having had so much hardship and interning and living at home over the last while they are sucking hard on a rolled cigarette saying “Young people these days, don’t know they’re born.”

The SUV and Benecol generation aged between 35 and 45 is simply not going to trust it. “Oh, ha ha, not that again. You got me the last time with the advertising hoarding. You can feck off with your extraordinary living. I’m fine and happy with my cheese sandwich.”

It will have to be irresponsible old people and children who make a show of themselves during this boom — grandparents and grandchildren off their heads in Tayto Park.

The Milesian Bullock — remember where you heard it first.