Was it really all that bad?
- no homelessness
- working people could actually afford a house
- crime almost non existent (Dublin went from having an almost zero murder rate to one of the murder rates in Europe)
- no foreign criminals
- landscape beautiful as ever (probably more unspoilt) and vacationing in Ireland cost nothing then.
- jobs might have been harder to come by but with the common travel area anybody could work in the UK without visas
- very few drug issues save for certain areas of Dublin
- people weren't as wealthy but there was always food on the table and a roof over your head. What's the point of making good money when you can't even afford your own home?
- church was a bit too influential but so what? They're actually preferable to all the athetist loony lefties around these days.