This era of plenty has occurred while Ireland has gone through the most rapid period of social change that this island has ever seen. We have seen our emigrant population grow from almost nothing to stand currently at 10%.

Traditional family units, which just two generations ago consisted of three generations of families living under the one roof, have been replaced by a diversity of family structures, with many families consisting of single-parent families, either through choice or due to relationship breakdown.

As we reflect back to the Ireland of the 1960s, we recall a society where the social norms reflected a deeply conservative world, where difference was not tolerated. Society hid the inconvenient truth of unmarried pregnancies and petty crime, caused in many cases through poverty, behind high-walled institutions.

The emigrant boat served as the pressure valve of society, exporting those who did not fit into the model that we were trying to project. Underneath the surface lay the deep unhappiness of many individuals whose hopes, dreams and aspirations could not be accommodated in that conservative Ireland.

The unprecedented wealth of the past 15 years has allowed the Ireland of yesteryear to transform itself into the society we have today, without the social conflict which might have occurred if resources were not so plentiful. Now that growth is slowing down, we can reflect on this New Ireland which is emerging from the Celtic Tiger, and the problems it confronts us with.

Have we, the native Irish, accepted cultural diversity, the right of those who have come to live and work among us, to aspire to all that we aspire for ourselves and our children?

Or do we secretly want them to remain on, only as sources of cheap labour, denied access to the professions that in which many of them already hold qualifications? Will we accept the rights of the next generation of emigrant's children to fully access the educational opportunities we aspire to for our own children, when scarce resources may dictate that places are limited to the most talented?

The failure of many emigrants to secure employment in trades and professions for which they are eminently qualified would indicate that we regard emigration as fulfilling a particular labour-market need, which depresses price inflation, provides workers for our fast-food industry, garage attendants for our petrol stations (where they have not been sold off for development) and nursing staff for our hospitals.

The intense competition for scarce places in our primary schools has led this month to the emergence of all-black classes of students who failed to secure a place in our traditional model of Church-run local primary schools.

MULTICULTURAL

The pressure from government on the Catholic Church to accept patronage of new schools which are patently not going to be populated by Catholic children may reflect a society which has not thought through the consequences of the new multicultural nature of our society.

We as a society are going to have to foot the bill for the huge sums required to purchase sites for schools to teach the children of both our own native families and those of our emigrants, which is running in some urban areas at over 5m per site. How will we respond to the taxation demands to provide these facilities?

Now that we have accepted total diversity in terms of our understanding of family, with the traditional model of two parents and a number of children living in the one house now constituting a minority of family units, how will we deal with the consequences of this rapid change in the nature of our society?

By choice or as a result of a breakdown in a relationship, many parents, mainly women, are rearing children alone in Ireland today. The hard-won battles of the liberal agenda have given women this freedom, that would in the past have condemned them to the emigrant boat, the Magdalene laundry, or worse.

In choosing to exercise this freedom, many women are taking on a task which is far more difficult that they may initially realise. The cuddly baby rapidly turns into the demanding youngster, as peer pressure exerts its influence once school starts.

The lack of male role models in many of these children's lives, due to the fact that the only affordable accommodation is many miles from parent's siblings, cousins and extended family, can cause added difficulties to these mothers. The problem often continues throughout the child's primary school years due to the acute shortage of men in primary schools. Consequently, many of these children enter their teens having lived in an all-female environment all their lives. Their male role models are drawn almost entirely from characters in the world of sports, music, the media, and increasingly accessed through the internet.

Controversial though it may sound, I have found in my work with young people over 30 years that children presenting with behavioural issues and with roleidentity confusion are often living in singleparent families. The statement of this fact is not in any way a condemnation on my part of parenting on the part of single parents. It simply reflects the fact that teenagers make huge demands on parents, their resources and patience, as any parent will testify.

Under this pressure from a growing teenager, many single mothers, who are also working full time to support themselves and their child or children, find that the isolation from family and from any real meaningful societal support leaves them struggling to provide the balanced parenting that they would aspire to for their child.

COUNSELLING

This struggle on the part of single parents reflects itself in the caseload of the counselling support services in every school in Ireland.

It is not sufficient for us in Irish society today to simply reap the benefits of cheap emigrant labour, or to accept the rights of women to choose to raise children alone, without reflecting on the long- and short-term consequences of these changes. I myself fully accept the rights of emigrants to have the same rights as all citizens, provided they accept the norms and values of the rest of society and integrate, by learning our language, history, culture and values.

I also accept any women's right to choose to have and raise a child on her own. But we need to have a debate concerning how we cherish all of the children of the nation equally, when many of these children and their mothers now need a wider range of societal supports than traditional family units.

The perceived short-term savings in failing to address this issue will see us paying a very heavy long-term price, as some of these children enter adulthood without the wide range of developmental skills, required to navigate their way successfully through life.