This book explores the hidden world of elite schooling in Ireland. It examines how, largely out of sight, a handful of schools protect class privilege and train those who will shape Irish society. It is a sociological study of elite education. At a time when wealth inequality has reached critical levels, studies of elite education can help understand how elites maintain their hold on wealth and power and how they shape social inequality. They can also shed light on the myth of meritocracy and help us understand the pervasiveness of social violence in our societies. The Irish case is interesting in its own right. Despite the high profile of many of their past pupils, elite schools in Ireland have remained largely under the radar. Their responsibility in blocking social mobility has been largely overlooked and successive governments have treated the matter as inconsequential, allowing the narrative of a meritocratic, classless society to prevail.
Does this narrative hold up to scrutiny? Are there no elites in Ireland, and no institutions facilitating their social reproduction? Is the impact of selective private schools on Irish society as insignificant as the scant attention paid to them seems to suggest? Is the use of the term ‘elite schools’ even appropriate in the Irish case? This introductory chapter addresses these questions and makes the case for a sociological examination of elite schooling in Ireland. To begin, it clarifies what and who we mean by ‘elites’ in the Irish context. It then examines the impact of elite schooling on social inequality as documented in other parts of the world. Next it outlines the specific configuration of the private education sector and introduces some of the schools, which will be central characters in the book. The final sections explain the methodology used in this research, tackle the thorny issue of anonymity and lay out the structure of the book.
1 Elites in Ireland?
The core argument of the book is that a small number of schools contribute to the reproduction of social inequality in Ireland; and that they do so by protecting and amplifying the privilege of a specific segment of Irish society. This segment is referred to as the ‘elites’, and at different points in the book I argue that it behaves as a distinct and mobilized social class. This makes it necessary to clarify some of the inevitable conceptual issues around elites and class, which are further complicated by the complex nature of class relations and class formation in Ireland.
1.1 Ireland’s Old and New Aristocracies of Wealth
The notions of inherited privilege, and more broadly those of class and elites, are at odds with the national narrative and are rarely part of national conversations. Class relations are less immediately discernible than in the neighboring UK. For instance, Ireland is believed not to have an upper class. Indeed, Ireland is a former British colony: its upper class was a colonial elite, which was overthrown in the wake of Irish Independence (1921). The industrialization of Ireland happened at a relatively late stage and was only partial, which hindered the formation of a capitalist class rooted in industry. The opening to foreign capital in the 1950s then forced a significant reorganization of the emerging local bourgeoisie. As a result, Ireland does not have a significant upper class descending from landed aristocrats and early corporate barons. Upon closer examination, however, heirs of the colonial elite still controlled large sectors of the Irish economy well into the 1950s (Kelleher, 1987), and today several of their descendants feature on The Irish ‘Rich List’ – most prominently the landowning Lord of Iveagh. Perhaps more importantly, Ireland has its own indigenous dynasties of wealth: political families, industrial and retail empires (Dunnes’ Stores, Barry’s Teas, Brennan’s Bakery, Musgrave Wholesales and, most famously, the Guinness dynasty), landlords owning hundreds of properties for generations, and so on: the longevity of inherited wealth is as much a reality in Ireland as it is anywhere else.
McCabe (2011) argues that rather than having a capitalist class in the conventional Marxist sense, Ireland has been dominated by a class of ‘middlemen’, consisting of stockbrokers, bankers, builders, lawyers or accountants, positioned between foreign capital and the resources of the Irish state. Finance and property, rather than land and industry, have been key to their prosperity and influence. This was particularly visible in the 1990s and 2000s (the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years), as ‘light-touch’ regulation and ad hoc tax breaks opened a space for the spectacular rise of new fortunes rooted in finance and property. Ireland, the poor man of Europe for a long time, soon became a poster child for neoliberalism, boasting one of the most globalized economies in the world, as well as bearing a striking pattern of accelerated wealth concentration.
In 2007, the magazine Wealth: Creating, Investing, Spending was launched in Ireland. ‘Tailored to an Irish high net-worth audience’, the part-lifestyle, part-wealth management magazine offered advice on purchasing fine art, vineyards, yachts, helicopters and even ‘the ultimate status symbol: your own private island’. It included interviews with Ireland’s wealthiest individuals and promised to keep readers up-to-date with the CLEWI (Cost of Living Extremely Well Index), modelled on the cost-of-living index but based instead on ‘a basket of luxury essentials’, including Gucci shoes, a Rolls Royce and a yacht. At the time, Ireland counted six billionaires and 30,000 millionaires for a population of 4.5 million (O’Sullivan, 2007). The housing market was at its peak, propelling investors to the dizzying heights of the annual Sunday Times Rich List, alongside music and media celebrities, financiers, industrialists and heirs to retailing empires. Meanwhile, aided by the profitability of the financial and property sectors, the high wages in the top ranks of the professions, civil service, media and business, and by a favorable tax regime, a section of the middle class became increasingly wealthy. This reinforced, rather than challenged, the national narrative of a meritocratic society with no fixed class structure – even though social mobility remained limited throughout the period and a substantial section of the population continued to live in poverty (Causa and Johansson, 2009).
The credit crunch of 2007 and the burst of the property bubble triggered a severe economic crisis, which deepened the wealth divide. Under the successive austerity budgets, wages, social welfare benefits and public expenditure were reduced; unemployment, indebtedness, homelessness and mass emigration reached a new peak. The crisis first affected the financial, construction and property sectors, and thus dislodged some of the new fortunes from the apex of the rich list. The total income of those declaring earnings over €275,000 fell by nearly 40 percent between 2007 and 2011 (FitzGerald, 2014), yet the share of national wealth owned by the top one percent of the population remained stable throughout the 2000–2014 period at about 27 percent; and between 2007 and 2014, the number of Irish millionaires more than quadrupled (Shorrocks, Davi and Lluberas, 2014, p. 125, p. 111). The process of wealth concentration at the apex of the social pyramid remained unabated as the state continued to protect the beneficiaries of financial capitalism (McCabe, 2011).
We may at this stage have formed an idea of who the Irish elites might be: financiers, property investors, heirs to industrial fortunes, landowners, and so forth. What else, beyond wealth and conspicuous consumption, might bring this rather ‘mixed bag’ together? Is it closed to outsiders or relatively open? Do elites have a common culture and common interests? Are they just a collection of disconnected individuals occupying specific positions or do they constitute an ‘active social group’ (Scott, 1991, p. 2)? In other words, do they form a cohesive group able to recognize and defend their own interests? These are important questions, which have historically structured debates in the field of the sociology of elites.
1.2 Are the Irish Elites a Class?
There are different theories of class, elites and power, which are sometimes framed as competing with each other, but their explanatory power can be amplified by blending them together, because mechanisms of domination are complex and require several concepts and theoretical viewpoints to be better understood (Shore, 2002). Class theory and power elite theory are particularly useful. Thus, we may consider that the small group we might call the ‘power elite’ overlaps with the broader capitalist or social upper class, because the former is largely recruited from - and acts in - the interest of the latter (Scott, 1991; Useem, 1984; Sklair, 2001; Domhoff, 2006).
With respect to the broader capitalist class or social upper class, Bourdieu’s concept of ‘dominant classes’ is useful, as it does not posit ethnic or cultural homogeneity and keeps the focus on the relational nature of domination. Dominant classes or groups are not superior: they owe their position to the marginalization and subjugation of others rather than to their own intrinsic qualities. The term ‘elites’ is used with the same intention by many researchers working with Bourdieu’s concepts. McCabe’s disproportionately influential ‘middlemen’ or ‘comprador class’ could be located in this broader group, with some effectively active within the power elite. Professionals enjoy a particular status in Ireland; while they would be characterized as middle class, some achieve very high levels of remuneration and it is not uncommon for accountants, business consultants, barristers and surgeons to invest in property developments and/or secure positions in corporations or government. We can therefore hypothesize that access to the ‘power elite’ in Ireland is conditioned primarily by economic capital and social capital, facilitated by inherited wealth and positions; and that a broader group designated in Ireland as the upper-middle class is the pool from which the ‘power elite’ is recruited.
Further work is required to identify the Irish ‘power elite’ more precisely, but for the time being we can accept that corporate interests are dominant and more relevant to class production and relations than, say, the opinions of the still influential Catholic clergy. We can also assume that elite networks are tighter in a country the size of Ireland. Very high levels of interlocked directorships and frequent crossovers between the public and private sectors (Clancy et al., 2010) suggest that the corporate/policy elite is highly cohesive and organized. Its ability to mobilize and influence state policy has been well documented by Allen and O’Boyle (2013) and McCabe (2011), among others, with additional insights from non-academic works examining the close-knit world of banking (Ross, 2009) or construction (McDonald and Sheridan, 2008) and their influence on policy-making.
In terms of a common, exclusive culture, it is worth noting that a section of the new (or not so new) elite adopted the cultural repertoire of the former Anglo-Irish ruling class, as shown by their taste for castles, horses, nobility titles (Sir Michael Smurfit, Sir Anthony O’Reilly, Sir Bob Geldof), private members’ clubs, boarding schools in Ireland or in the UK, fine art collections, philanthropy and even fox hunting – all of which are associated with wealth and are reminiscent of the social and cultural exemplars set by the colonial elite. The level of integration of this new aristocracy of wealth to older wealth is not known precisely; yet by adopting such consumption patterns and exclusive social spaces, some of the ‘new rich’ have in effect become a separate social group. Conspicuous or discreet havens for the wealthy dot the landscapes of Ireland’s countryside and cities: the K-Club resort, where holiday homes can only be purchased by carefully selected candidates, is but one example of the many mechanisms of social, symbolic and spatial separation sought by members of this group. As far as Ryanair’s multimillionaire CEO Michael O’Leary is concerned, his conspicuous ‘down-to-earth’ demeanor must not obscure the fact that through his relentless attacks on trade unions, workers’ rights and social welfare, he is also actively defending class privileges, making visible the interests he shares ...