Ireland is often portrayed as a charming laboratory time capsule of pre-industrial Europe, and its people as either a beguiling race of quaint and gullible country folk, fondly imbued with an affectionate lack of logic, or as irrational individuals with a disingenuous blarney. The truth is more complicated but Ireland has leapfrogged over the industrial age into a high-tech, postmodern economy, and the country is far from being a social or cultural backwater. Indeed, the very vibrancy of the people and their society is what attracts so many visitors…