A lot of tech companies have opened up offices in Ireland (ostensibly due to tax laws) and have started to attract young, progressive talent into the country. This investment has helped the economy and raised the standard of living in Ireland, so less people are concerned with enforcing conservative/religion-based regulation.
This article has some better stats/anecdotes:
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/12/08/368770530/u...
Ireland lived under the thumb of the church until the 80s. They dictated the morals of the nation, and when their corruption and hypocrisy was exposed it became OK to speak out against them without being ostracized. Condoms were legalized in 1978, without prescription in 1985. Homosexuality in 1993. Divorce in 1995. We transitioned from one of the most conservative countries in the West to one of the most liberal in a remarkably short time.
The gay marriage referendum was primarily seen as younger generation issues, but I was pleased to see that the older generations showed their support in the end - the general attitude was "It's not harming anyone, so why should I stand in their way".
Our government, however, would never be the first to make bold reforms in drug laws. We have the United States, Portugal, the Netherlands and Spain to thank for the progress made. Some former ministers responsible for drugs have come out in support of treating it as a health instead of a criminal issue AFTER they left office.
Anyways I think that this is just an election ploy for the youth vote. Here is what the current Taoiseach (prime minister) had to say about legalising cannabis on the Youtube Digital Debate Q&A at the last election: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6k9sohbulg (the typical answer to a question was about a minute).
The affect of US tech companies coming here has largely been a small-scale version of Palo Alto-esque gentrification of a small area of Dublin (docklands) and any improvements in standard of living being limited to a small white male tech elite. Overall poverty is up (we're dealing with a very serious recent homelessness crisis) and average standards of living have dropped significantly in the country otherwise and reported economic improvements in world news are typical of our conservative government's focus on primarily export-based GDP figures, etc. over actual progressive population-based data.
I think on the other hand, politics aside, there is a definite strong movement away from the church at least, which I think is largely a lingering result of the various very public abuse scandals over the past few decades.
Edit: That NPR article is interesting in its focus on Cork. I live in Dublin, so I can't really comment much anecdotally on Cork, but with the exception of Apple, almost all major US tech firms that have HQ-ed here (Google, Facebook, MS, Twitter, etc.) are Dublin-based, so it seems an unusual focus in that regard.
Hard to say why the sudden progressive turn in Irish politics. With the marriage equality referendum 1 in 3 voted against, so there is still 33% of the country that I can guarantee you would be very conservative. But yes, for what was once a deeply religious country there has been a seismic shift in culture.
GenX is the generation where the shift first happened. I have seen the following reasons. Television (I'm not kidding), low-cost travel (Ryanair), 3rd-level education, Church scandals, ...
Very hard to say why this political shift, frankly even though people in Ireland have been talking for years about the decriminalisation of cannabis (t the very least) and even though I felt it must happen some day I am still surprised. The supervised injection clinics is a great idea.
Agreed on the lack of progress in poverty, social inequality is growing - in part as a result of the concentration of growth in the tech industry, as well as the stagnation of public sector wages and the slow removal of hiring freezes.
There's also been a reasonable female uptake of STEM at third-level in recent years, in part due to deliberate initiatives to promote it. I get the anecdotal impression this may have translated into reducing imbalance in a few science/engineering-related fields (I could be wrong), but not really IT-related stuff seemingly.
On the homelessness crisis:
Amazing that housing prices in Dublin have jumped up 22.3% YoY. [1] What else do you see contributing to the rise in poverty/homelessness and the decline in living standards in Ireland?
[1] http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Ireland/Price-Hist...
It would like measuring the average house price in the US by just measuring the BA.
I can buy a house in my hometown which is well serviced by schools and more than the essentials for about €150k.
The one thing that Ireland gets right is access to 3rd level education. I'm constantly floored by the amount of debt that students in North American and UK (or wherever else) pile up getting educated. I will concede that their standard of education is probably higher but, personal experience, I see very little difference in the average standard of graduate produced.
Coming from a working class background, I was lucky enough to be on the grant system so would have received about €3.5k a year to attend college - it wasn't huge and I obviously had to work part time but it certainly helped.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to arrive at is that the best way for a society to progress is via education and I think we're doing good (though it could be much better) at this right now.
Dublin is good for tech companies as it's easy to do business and get investment, English is the main language, there is good internet [0], you can quickly get to central Europe (thanks Ryanair), and compared to London the cost of living is a lot lower. It's just a shame about the weather...
[0] Unless you are stuck in a building only served by Eircom.