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Irish civil servants and political advisers reveal their role in the Northern Ireland peace process. Their testimonies evoke a strong sense of the highly sensitive political environment in which they worked. They reflect on the impact of an ever-changing political landscape on prospects for advancing the peace process, and on the evolution of policy and thinking about Northern Ireland from the outbreak of violence in 1968 to the conclusion of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. These personal accounts offer insight into how the Irish tried to shape the course of the negotiation of a hard-won agreement.

1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising'looks closely at how the Irish government reinvented the message of Easter 1916 through the official golden jubilee celebrations of the nationalist Rising. This collection of essays explores the organization of various unofficial commemorations in Northern Ireland in 1966 and the significance of these for nationalist and unionist politics in the mid-1960s. It analyzes the golden jubilee of the Rising from a political perspective, and revisits the 1966 anniversary from the perspectives of drama, performance, youth culture and history. Contributors to the book are the editors, Mary E. Daly and Margaret O'Callaghan, and: Diarmaid Ferriter, Rebecca Graff-McRae, Roisin Higgins, Carole Holohan, Michael Laffan, Catherine O'Donnell and Anthony Roche.

Today Ireland's population is rising, immigration outpaces emigration, most families have two or at most three children, and full-time farmers are in steady decline. But the opposite was true for more than a century, from the great famine of the 1840s until the 1960s. Between 1922 and 1966—most of the first fifty years after independence—the population of Ireland was falling, in the 1950s as rapidly as in the 1880s. Mary Daly's The Slow Failure examines not just the reasons for the decline, but the responses to it by politicians, academics, journalists, churchmen, and others who publicly agonized over their nation's “slow failure.” Eager to reverse population decline but fearful that economic development would undermine Irish national identity, they fashioned statistical evidence to support ultimately fruitless policies to encourage large, rural farm families. Focusing on both Irish government and society, Daly places Ireland's population history in the mainstream history of independent Ireland. Daly's research reveals how pastoral visions of an ideal Ireland made it virtually impossible to reverse the fall in population. Promoting large families, for example, contributed to late marriages, actually slowing population growth further. The crucial issue of emigration failed to attract serious government attention except during World War II; successive Irish governments refused to provide welfare services for emigrants, leaving that role to the Catholic Church. Daly takes these and other elements of an often-sad story, weaving them into essential reading for understanding modern Irish history

The roots of many problems facing Ireland's economy today can be traced to the first two decades following its independence. Opening previously unexplored areas of Irish history, this is the first comprehensive study of industrial development and attitudes toward industrialization during a pivotal period, from the founding of the Irish Free State to the Anglo­Irish Trade Treaty.As one of the first postcolonial states of the twentieth century, Ireland experienced strong tensions between the independence movement and the considerable institutional and economic inertia from the past. Daly explores these tensions and how Irish nationalism, Catholicism, and British political traditions influenced economic development. She thus sheds light on the evolution of economic and social attitudes in the newly independent state.Drawing on a wide array of primary sources, Daly examines such topics as Irish economic thinking before independence; the conservative policies of W. T. Cosgrave's government in the first five years after independence; the growing division between the two major political parties over economic policy; Fianna Fail's controversial attempts to develop an independent—and nationalistic—economic policy; the largely unsuccessful attempt to develop native industries; the development of financial institutions; the political and social implications of economic change; the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement of 1938; and comparisons with other economically emerging nations.