ABSTRACT
Prior to independence, nationalist sentiment placed great hopes on industrialisation as the means of developing the Irish economy and tackling the long-standing labour surplus. In the event, the period since independence has witnessed a considerable growth in industrial output, but progress in regard to employment has been disappointing. Moreover, the poor performance of indigenous firms once free trade was fully restored in the 1970s, and the fall-off in new foreign enterprise investment from Ireland's major sources in the 1980s, which we discuss later, have raised serious doubts about the solidity of Ireland's industrial achievements.
