Research on Higher Education in Ireland

Abstract

The Republic of Ireland has experienced rapid social and economic change during the past three decades. Its economic transformation in particular is linked to a number of initiatives which commenced in the late 1950s. Henceforth, economic development was to be pursued through a policy of rapid industrialization to be achieved with the help of foreign investment and to be sustained by export-led growth. While this policy has faltered seriously in recent years, the rapid economic growth achieved in the 1960s and through much of the 1970s has brought about a radical transformation: the percentage of the workforce employed in agriculture declined from 36 percent in 1961 to less than 16 percent in 1985. Within the non-agricultural workforce, the main growth areas have been in the professional, administrative, technical, and other skilled occupational groups.