A Different View
Is it where you’re born that makes you Irish?
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The Arsenal midfielder Jack Wiltshire may not be internationally recognised as one of life’s great philosophers, but his recent insistence that only English-born footballers should be entitled to play for England did prompt a slightly different question closer to home – do you have to be Irish to be Irish?
In simple terms, are Irish people only those born in Ireland or are they also the 50 million or more worldwide who make up what we know as the Irish Diaspora – or are they also those who choose to make their home and their lives here?
We’re happy to claim the sons and daughters of emigrants when it comes to events like the Gathering or the Global Irish Economic Forum, and rightly so; they consider themselves Irish and they were brought up with their Irish heritage, so who are we to take that away from them?
We’re not quite as unanimous when it comes to conferring Irishness on those who come to live here. Our own forefathers may have been the prototype of the economic migrant, but we’re slow to return the favour.
So what makes you Irish then? Birth, for sure – if you’re born here, you’re Irish by birth. And that includes the children born to refugees or asylum seekers or migrants from any part of the planet.
The simple truth is that, if you go back far enough, very few of us were Irish. For a start, you can forget those with Viking or Norman heritage – and the planters may have been bequeathed the land, but they cannot claim the roots.
St Patrick was a Welsh man, Dev was either Spanish or American and half our international soccer team wouldn’t have been able to find the place on a map prior to their call-up.
And yet these Plastic Paddies played key, if different, roles in our history. One rid the country of snakes – although the party founded by Dev produced a few of them over the subsequent decades – and the Anglo lads, led by Big Jack the Geordie, became the quintessential Boys in Green, after a Scotsman in an Irish shirt but the ball in the back of the English net.
If we were to take a narrow definition of the Irish, wouldn’t half of Galway and Connemara lose out with that colouring that owes everything to the Spanish Armada?
Are those who descended from the hundreds of thousands who left on coffin ships during Famine times any less Irish that those who stayed?
Haven’t we just spent a year selling this notion of Irishness to the world, inviting them all home for a Gathering so that they could find their roots?
Would we deny the right to Irishness to those yet to be born – in Sydney or Boston or Toronto – whose parents still haven’t met each other but who have all been forced out of their homeland by the greed of some and the criminal indifference of those we elected to watch them?
Albert Reynolds had his own take on what it took to be Irish during his time in office – it took around one million old Irish pounds stuck into an Irish bank account and then you could get yourself a legitimate Irish passport.
So Tony Cascarino wasn’t the first non-Irishman to get an Irish passport – only he at least lifted our spirits the odd time on the pitch we should still call Lansdowne Road.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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