I'm in the very lucky position to live in Ethiopia, where I work for the aid agency Goal in a job that I enjoy immensely and find extremely rewarding. I have very close family back in Ireland, and try to travel home once or twice a year. When seeing my nieces and children of friends that I may not have seen for six months or a year, I'm struck by how they've grown; how a toddler is now a child, how single words are now sentences, how hair has lengthened or been cut. It brings into stark contrast how they are the same, but also ever-changing. It seems to me that the gap between visits home allows me recognise these changes much more clearly than the children's parents, who spend each day with them.

Similarly in my regular travelling back and forward to Ireland during the heady years of the Celtic Tiger, I've been able to observe the changes affecting our society – Ireland is the same, but different.

Ireland has always ignored the fact that it is a small island nation in northern Europe, with a tiny population compared to many countries. The population of Ethiopia's capital city, Addis Ababa, is more or less the same as Ireland's, a fact that amazes my Ethiopian friends. And yet Ireland has contributed immensely to tackling both the causes and impact of poverty and continues to be a key player. This is exemplified by the fact that, here, two of the major agencies dealing with severe malnutrition are Irish – Concern and Goal.

I believe that, in the main, the Irish have certain attributes that have allowed so many of us to successfully assimilate and indeed dominate our chosen professions, and to integrate and succeed in the many countries of the world we have chosen to call home: compassion for our fellow human beings, a strong sense of fair play, a desire to do good and help others, and a recognition of justice and equity as a right.

If it is true that the Irish have attributes that have allowed us to punch above our weight internationally, then it is also opportune to discuss the impact that the Celtic Tiger decade has had on these attributes. My own opinion is that many of these core values have indeed been affected by affluence, and not for the good.

The obsessions with personal wealth, material possessions, houses prices, foreign holidays, new cars etc, have been an unnecessary distraction, and in the end have brought no lasting value to our country. On a very recent visit home, and in conversation with a solicitor friend, he acknowledged a sense of relief that the whole rollercoaster ride was coming to an end. He said he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable bringing up children in a society that prioritised transient values of wealth and materialism.

When Goal responds in Ethiopia, we work on the principal of 'do no harm'. Ethiopia has long experience in dealing with crop failures, rain shortages and other natural disasters. Local communities have developed ways of dealing with these events as best they can, and it is Goal's job to work alongside these communities to strengthen these responses, not to replace them. Similarly, Ireland has a long experience of dealing with recession and poverty, has valuable resources in its people, their core values and in good governance. We have weathered many serious problems before, and we know we have the skill, the tenacity and the self-belief to do so again.

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