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The Celtic Tiger and the Guinness drought

By John Corry


本場でギネスが飲めなくなる?!

お酒好きで知られるアイルランド人がこよなく愛すギネスビール。独特のほろ苦さとクリーミーな泡が特徴で、いまや世界中で親しまれています。ところが、2ヵ月前、そのビール製造会社の従業員たちがストライキに入るという発表があり、地元アイルランドでギネスが飲めなくなるかもしれないという危機的な事態が起きました。

One of the central icons associated with Ireland has recently come under threat , largely due to the economic success of the Irish economy. For people outside of Ireland it must be strange to consider that the most common subject for conversation in Dublin recently has been the prospect of a strike in the Guinness brewery.

Guinness beer is a black beer with a thick creamy-white head and has a slightly bitter taste. Tourists to Ireland see Guinness beer initially as a curiosity. My recommendation is that it should be first tasted in a proper Irish pub. A good Irish pub is a place where people go to relax and enjoy good conversation with their friends in a welcoming atmosphere. Guinness is said to be an acquired taste. However, if you look around any Irish pub, you can easily see plenty of evidence that it is not a difficult taste to acquire.

Guinness maintains a truly mythological place in Irish society and is used as a symbol of Irishness the world over. The scale and success of this dark beer is hard to comprehend. Each year, the Dublin brewery uses 90,000 tons of Irish barley, representing 7 percent of the total Irish crop in order to brew over 2 million liters of Guinness per day in Dublin alone.

The global growth in popularity of Guinness is one of Ireland's real success stories. However, recently the entire Irish economy has been growing quickly and the popularity of Guinness has strengthened with it. The economic success experienced in Ireland in the last decade has created a sustained economic boom. Economic growth in Ireland over the last five years has been on average in excess of 8 percent. Obvious comparisons have been drawn with the Southeast Asian tiger economies of the 1980s. This has lead to Ireland being termed "The Celtic Tiger," given that in terms of ethnicity most Irish people would claim to have Celts as their ancestors.

The most visibly successful Irish youth are often referred to as the "cubs" of the Celtic Tiger and are easily observed with a mobile phone in one hand and the keys to a new, expensive car in the other. Overall, the population of Ireland is quite young with 41 percent under the age of 25.

This has led to Dublin becoming a very vibrant and youthful city. Economic success has instilled a new confidence in Irish people, which is most clearly seen in the under-25 age group.

Surprisingly, Guinness has been adopted as the fashionable choice of beer for the cubs. My parent's generation may not always approve of the behavior of their successful sons and daughters but there is secret admiration for the newfound confidence visible in their offspring.

One change, which I haven't found as welcome, has been the birth of the superpub. The superpub is far removed from the style of the traditional Irish pub. The central idea seems to be to fit as many young Irish people as possible into one building and play music as loud as possible. An average superpub can accommodate about 1,500 people, which is over five times the size of a normal pub. However, the superpub is currently the venue of choice for the average Irish cub to be seen, and even in these superpubs, Guinness remains the most popular beer.

However, the success of the Celtic Tiger has resulted in wage inflation for Guinness, and in April, Guinness announced that they intended to shift part of their operation out of Ireland in order to reduce costs. Guinness workers could not accept this plan and in April began the biggest strike in the Irish beverage industry in over 20 years.

Guinness brewery announced that they expected the Irish domestic supply of Guinness to run out within 10 days. This prospect was very amusing to some and a real crisis to others. Ireland without readily available Guinness is like the U.S. without McDonalds. Many international admirers and visitors to Ireland would have been extremely disappointed if they could not taste the famous brew in its home country.

I do agree that Ireland in the throes of high growth is a better place to live than Ireland in a recession. However, it is ironic that the very success of the Irish Celtic Tiger would be responsible for ensuring that Irish people could not purchase their national drink.

Happily, the real strike only lasted several hours. Within 12 hours, Guinness workers started making the famous beer again and Irish cubs and Irish parents breathed a sigh of relief. As for me, I celebrated the good news in my favorite pub with (can't you guess?) a nice pint of Guinness.


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Shukan ST: June 8, 2001

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