The Irish Times

Galway is the quintessentially Irish city, the only one in the State that was not established by the Vikings. There is something truly indigenous about its character, and it's not just because of all the signs in Irish; even roundabouts on the main roads are named after the city's 14 founding tribes. They're going to run out of names soon. The Quincentennial Bridge may have been seen in 1984 as marking Galway's outer limit, but now it's an urban roadway carrying some 40,000 vehicles a day as a result of relentless expansion at the city's edges, and plans are being laid for a new Outer Ring Road. Galway's growth has been so explosive that the planners are still running to catch up. Its population increased by 12 per cent between 1991 and 1996 and by a further 15 per cent between 1996 and 2002 (to 65,774) - largely due to in-migration by people attracted by hi-tech jobs and "quality of life".