In all the misery of 1980s Ireland, with its falling population, mass unemployment and large-scale emigration, it was not too easy to grasp that something astonishing was starting. The continuing flow of young Irish people to the States masked the slow tide that was coming in from the Atlantic, the drift, at first a steady current and then a surge, of American multinational investment. The flow was beginning to be reversed: America was coming home to us.
