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Ireland’s Long Run Social Development and Vulnerabilitysocial development can be explained by its continued position as adependent peripheral country in a neo-colonial relation with thedominant capitalist powers (O’Hearn, 2001). Thus, O’Hearn deniesthat Ireland has made any real economic breakthrough, and says “Inthe main, the Irish tiger economy boils down to a few UScorporations in IT and pharmaceuticals” (O’Hearn, 1996). A relatedview acknowledges that significant economic growth has occurred,but sees it as “economic success and social failure” (Kirby, 2002).This “correlation of economic success with social failure…is noaccident. It derives from the central feature or Ireland’s industrialisation,namely its high level of dependence on inward investment”(Kirby, 2002: 141). In both cases, Ireland’s experience is explainedis by the state’s adoption of a neo-liberal economic and socialstrategy. In both cases, social partnership is seen as a mechanism bywhich social groups are co-opted to neo-liberalism (Kirby, 2002:163).A central aspect of these interpretations is the dual claim, first, thatIreland’s recent economic growth is characterised by an expansionof low-skilled, low-paid, jobs and, second, that this is an unavoidablefeature of the path of economic development that Ireland hasadopted. Addressing the first of these claims, O’Connell (2000)notes that:It is generally assumed that recent growth has beenaccompanied by a corresponding increase in inequalityand the emergence of qualitatively different form ofmarginalisation, exclusion and polarisation. Such argumentshave generally not been accompanied by detailedempirical analysis and the reality, we will argue, issomewhat more complicated. (p. 3)Having analysed the long-run trends in the labour market and theclass structure and occupational structure of Irish society,O’Connell concludes that ”the more recent trends represent acontinuation of well-established trends over the past three or fourdecades” (p. 76). What are these trends? “Overall the long runtrends in the class structure have entailed an up-grading of thequality of positions in the labour market and there is little in this131