The West must wait presents a new perspective on the development of the Irish Free State. It extends the regional historical debate beyond the Irish revolution and raises a series of challenging questions about post-civil war society in Ireland.

Through a detailed examination of key local themes - land, poverty, politics, emigration, the status of the Irish language, the influence of radical republicans and the authority of the Catholic Church - it offers a probing analysis of the socio-political realities of life in the new state.

This book opens up a new dimension by providing a rural contrast to the Dublin-centred views of Irish politics. Significantly, it reveals the level of deprivation in local Free State society with which the government had to confront in the west. Rigorously researched, it explores the disconnect between the perceptions of what independence would deliver and what was achieved by the incumbent Cumann na nGaedheal administration.