When Economic Development was published in 1958, Ireland was a growth failure but thirty years later it became the Celtic Tiger. This paper places this remarkable development in the context of long-run economic growth in Western Europe and establishes the distinctive features of Irish experience and policy. This enables an assessment of the diagnosis and policy proposals that Whitaker provided fifty years ago. The central roles in the Celtic Tiger of foreign direct investment, ICT production, and an elastic labour supply are highlighted while the importance of globalization and the abandonment of misguided autarchic policies is made clear.