Jim Power

That's the Waterford pronunciation of Welsh.

A little bit more, Chris.

No, it's interesting.

Two days ago, I did an interview on Warford Local Radio, and the interviewer was asking me about the sort of level of discontent out there at the moment, given the fact that the Irish economy is ostensibly doing well, the labour market is strong, record number of people at work.

And so in many ways, we've never had it so good, but yet there is a strong level of discontent out there and exploring the reasons for that and housing, the quality of public services, inequality, issues like that are certainly feeding into it.

I think social media is definitely feeding into it because it gives certainly a platform for populace to actually spread a strong message out there

But I came back and I was discussing growing up in Ireland in the late 60s and 70s and indeed into the 80s.

It was a pretty grim place.

You know, the job opportunities were terrible.

It was either the bank or the civil service.

Or if you were lucky enough, you might be able to get to college.

The Catholic Church had a stranglehold over the way we lived our lives and preoccupied

particularly had a stranglehold over our parents' generation.

Thankfully, our generation broke those shackles, but still it was a feature of the landscape.

And I could tell you so many stories about my experiences in both national and secondary school in the face of this sort of religious persecution, if you want to call it that.

So, you know, the good old days in the 70s in Ireland certainly were not that good.

But

maybe our level of expectation was a hell of a lot lower then.

And, you know, we were happy.

You know, we explored the stuff all teenagers did at that stage.