De Valera retired from government and was elected President of Ireland in 1959. By the time of his retirement in 1973 at the age of 90, Ireland had become a member of the European Community on January 1st 1973. That act demonstrated that attitudes were already changing.

Edna O'Brien published The Country Girls in 1960. Eimear McBride wrote in The Irish Times on September 16, 2017;

To minds shackled by the many Machiavellian impositions of religious prohibition, institutional contempt and unquestioning denigration of female intellect she sang the song of awareness, of dissent and the necessity of searching out better, and more.