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Ho ho ho, I've complained about this one before, so let me reduce the broth down to its essence: anything Richard Lynn says about Irish IQ scores is politically motivated bullshit.
Very conveniently for him that the rebellious Paddies in the South are dumber (science says so!) than the loyal subjects of Empire in the North, who in turn are not quite as smart as the minor province on the mainland (the Scots) until we get to the peak and pinnacle of the British Isles, the most intelligent who live in London (naturally).
I'm not saying there isn't any data there, but he took data from two (yes, just two) IQ tests done in the 70s, kludged them together, then declared the Irish (rum Romanism and rebellion subset) had an IQ of 95. Everyone and their dog then quoted this as Gospel when writing news reports.
Later, better testing comes along and well well lookit dat: the Irish (priest-ridden Southern revolting subset) turn out to be human after all.
EDIT: There is something to the notion of better education, economic improvement and the like, I won't deny it. But the seeming jump of about 10-15 IQ points is not down to "suddenly, via progress, the Irish developed brains between one generation and another" as much as it is "modernisation produced a generation better schooled and better at test-taking, along with the environmental causes that are attributed to the Flynn Effect".
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