St Patrick’s Day can be a bizarre day for Irish people, and never more so than this year.
As Taoiseach Micheál Martin guffawed “that’s a good answer” to US president Donald Trump’s description of the Irish housing crisis as a “good problem” and a symptom of Ireland “doing so well”, it’s hard to say precisely where we stand on the diplomacy front. To stay in the good graces of an unpredictable US, Martin was the picture of submissiveness on his Washington trip – so deferential to Trump that it seemed as though he could still smell Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s fright on the air. He had the look of a boy who feared being embarrassed in front of the class.
The mention of the housing issues was a stark reminder of Ireland’s roiling identity crisis. We have always been a nation of people who sometimes happen not to be living in Ireland, usually given overwhelming economic conditions that have, at various points in history, driven us out in search of another kind of life. When our nationhood was a contested concept, we understood Irishness to be a shared condition that could flourish separately from the land itself. The Irish in Britain and America held a claim to the identity that was not just respected, but very much needed and affirmed, at home.
The present reality is different. With increased immigration, once-again rising emigration, and rapid social change accelerated by generational shifts in attitude, technology and ideas, Irish identity has never been less straightforward.
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It may be easier to say what it isn’t. The hyper-commercialised “Irish” national brand that dominates at this time of year may be all in good fun, but it bears little resemblance to anything authentically Irish. As we grapple with complex questions of belonging, home and national identity, much of the world indulges in a performative caricature of our culture that can range from “fond (if largely inaccurate)” to “a bit embarrassing for all involved, really”. And overall, it’s fine. We’re used to it. We profit from it. It is a symptom of the affable goodwill much of the world still has toward us. We don’t take it for granted, even if we disdain some of the forms that goodwill takes (we’re not big on artificial ginger beards or green vomit).
That goodwill can sometimes entail a bigotry of low expectation. Our international reputation for scholarship and letters seems rivalled only by our international reputation as Europe’s drunken eejits, but this too we tolerate. Irish people have better things to do than get offended. If French tourists want to come to Dublin and fritter away a month’s salary on overpriced beer and inflammable polyester hats, we’re happy enough to let them. If a guy from Ohio wants to Sellotape cardboard buckles on to his New Balance trainers and ask what a Tayto sandwich is before telling us about his Irishness at the decibel level of a small aircraft, we can bring ourselves to nod politely for one afternoon a year.
We operate on a collective understanding that while St Patrick’s Day is our day of national celebration, it is also a day of international PR. It’s a diplomatic occasion on which we maintain global relevance, showcase what Martin knowingly called “a good defensive style” when it comes to awkward questions about trade deficits, and the Irish diaspora is encouraged to renew their links to Ireland, even if people who actually live in Ireland are secretly grumbling about how that diaspora isn’t really Irish at all.
This is one of the more benign manifestations of a virulent disagreement and tension over what constitutes Irishness broadly, and over who is entitled to police or to claim it. Conversations about birthright, citizenship, ancestry, culture and language are taking place even as there is debate over the right of the sprawling diaspora to lay claim to Irish identity from abroad. This is all unfolding amid the pervasive feeling among some sections of the population that there are “real” Irish people and then there are “the others”, whether those others are immigrants or emigrants.
Despite our reputation for friendliness and generosity, we sometimes seem to be clutching Irish identity in a pinched fist. We struggle to reconcile our long history of migration with growing unease about immigration – an unease which is considered too unpalatable to be directly addressed by most politicians, but which is clearly unsustainable to ignore. A shifting political landscape across the West is sufficient evidence that this avoidance is not constructive.
And then there are the generations that feel locked out. While our leaders represent our interests on the world stage by chuckling about the housing crisis, Ireland is once again experiencing an exodus of younger people. A fresh wave of emigration continues, with the number of those emigrating at its highest level in a decade, as the Central Statistics Office confirms that approximately four in 10 Irish people aged between 18 and 34 live with their parents.
Emigrants who move to avoid a life in the box room are viewed with both nostalgia and resentment. During a recent radio segment in which Pat Kenny asked a young Irish journalist about her recent move to Sydney and her planned swim across Sydney harbour, Kenny read a begrudging text from a listener that was the equivalent of “we have good swimming at home”. We do indeed. If only 41 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds could live underwater.
Hopefully some of these emigrants will return. We have a reputation for coming back as well as for leaving, after all. The Ireland they return to will need to make room for them, their new habits, expectations and experience. They may bring back with them a generation raised elsewhere.
Clearly, a vibrant and open conversation about what it means to be Irish – and what Irishness looks like in a complex world – is now more important than ever. Many among us have become accustomed to focusing our energy on what and who isn’t Irish. As other nations dabble in our culture and identity and our politicians sell a pastiche around the world this week, Irish people may be better served by considering what Irishness really is and, without deference to the vicissitudes of an erratic international climate, who we want to be.
