Tag: Ireland

Options now for Ireland’s defenders of human life?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment
Senator Ronan Mullen

The defenders of children in the womb are still reeling in Ireland today after the majority of their political representatives have clearly abandoned them and are proceeding with legislation which will legalise the killing of the unborn in Ireland for the first time.

They are now looking at what options remain to them to defend those whom they see as the most defenceless, children awaiting birth – those whom the pro-abortion camp refuses to call human at all and insistently and disparagingly refer to as simply “ fetuses”.

The first option is the intensification of lobbying of the members of the Oireachtas (the two houses of the Irish parliament). But other options are also on the agenda. Earlier this year between 25 and 30 thousand pro-life people from all over the island gathered at the parliament building to demand that the majority party in the Coalition Government keep its election promise not to legislate for abortion. That party is now seen as having blatantly has broken that promise. No one doubts that it did so in order stay in power by keeping faith on the deal it made with its socialist partners in Government.

There will be more street demonstrations between now and the time this legislation comes before the two houses for debate. Unless there is a major shift in the balance of support for it within the parties the bill will become law in the summer.

What options exist after that? Well they can launch a major campaign for the repeal of the legislation leading up to the next general election. “Repeal” is a word with enormous historic significance in Irish history. For the decades stretching from the 1830s up to the final violent struggle for Irish independence from the United Kingdom beginning in 1916, repeal of the Act which held that union together was the centrepiece of all Irish politics. No Irish politician would want to be seen facing down a new Repeal Movement of the scale and with the emotional potential which this one would have.

For those for whom this is a matter of faith as well as a matter of moral social policy in purely human terms, people from all over Ireland are gathering for a Vigil for Life in Knock, Co Mayo tomorrow (Saturday, 4th May). It will be the first major demonstration on the issue since the Government’s approval on Tuesday. Knock is the Irish national shrine of the Blessed Virgin and ironically is situated on the home turf of the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. Not many expect to see him there tomorrow, however.

The language of opposition to this proposed legislation is already gathering momentum and strength. Senator Ronan Mullen, independent of parties, said yesterday that It is clear already that the Taoiseach and his Government are proposing a dangerous and destructive thing – the legalization of abortion on the ground of threatened suicide. There is no credible evidence that abortion is any kind of treatment for suicidal ideation in women. We know the consequences for the unborn child. And we know what this kind of legislation has started elsewhere.

Legislating for abortion on the suicide ground, he explained, is not required by the European Court judgment. This was a Court ruling in 2010 which many see as fig-leaf being disingenuously used by the government to justify the pursuit of this legislation forced by the socialists on the major party as a condition for entering government with them. The European Court simply required that the Irish government would “clarify” the legal situation for women with regard to its abortion laws. We could, Senator Mullen said, provide the necessary clarity by introducing guidelines which would protect women in pregnancy by re-affirming that they receive all necessary life saving treatments in pregnancy and requiring that we also exercise a duty of care towards the unborn.

Ireland has one of the best records in the world when it comes to a question of maternal health.

He also clarified that legislation for abortion on the suicide ground is not required by the X-case. When he was Taoiseach, John Bruton said he would not introduce legislation in line with the X-case because that would have the effect of bringing abortion into Ireland. The Oireachtas has the prerogative of not legislating for a Supreme Court decision if it believes it would be harmful to do so. Mr. Bruton, who was leader of the same party as the current Taoiseach, spoke out last weekend in opposition to this proposed legislation.

Mullen went on to say that this legislation will not be about ‘life-saving’ treatment but, in fact, the opposite. The Government has produced no evidence to show that abortion is ever beneficial in the treatment of the mental health of women. We know from the latest review of the evidence (Fergusson et al.) that abortion is not associated with any mental health benefit for women. In fact, it is associated with a low to moderate increased risk for women’s mental health. And, of course, we know a child always dies. So it is dishonest to pretend that this proposal is about saving life.

That is why over 100 psychiatrists last week signaled their opposition to being involved in certifying women as needing abortion to save their lives because this is not evidence-based medicine. International experience shows that provision for abortion on the mental health ground will be abused. It is hard to see how things could be different in Ireland, given the nature of what is proposed today.

The big question for many is of course who will choose the medical team to assess whether or not an abortion is “warranted”. Everyone in Ireland knows that in Britain two doctors are needed to sign off for abortions and that in many cases this is done without any scrutiny. Last year the Daily Telegraph uncovered widespread and totally unscrupulous ethical behaviour by doctors.

The third path being mulled over by activists defending life is the constitutional one. Ironically just this week a judgement was handed down by the Irish Supreme Court which some think has a bearing on the proposed legislation.

In a case where a woman was seeking confirmation of constitutional right to commit suicide – and be assisted in doing that by her husband – the Supreme Court held that there is no constitutional right to commit suicide or to arrange for the determination of one’s life at a time of one’s choosing. This decision follows from the constitutional obligation to respect life and to refrain from taking away the life of another.

The Court rejected the ‘autonomy’ argument to the contrary, ruling that  “It is also possible to construct a libertarian argument that the State is not entitled to interfere with the decisions made by a person in respect of his or her own life up to and including a decision to terminate it. However, it is not possible to discern support for such a theory in the provisions of the Constitution, without imposing upon it a philosophy and values not detectable from it.”

Pro life legal experts are now suggesting that if the mother of an unborn child does not have a constitutional right to willfully end her own life, a fortiori she can have no constitutional right to take away the life of her unborn child, or to obtain assistance in that regard.

There are some who think that contradictions are inherent here between two Supreme Court rulings and that in this they may find an Achilles’ heel in the proposed legislation to render it null and void should it get into the statute books.

One way or another Ireland is heading into protracted political and constitutional warfare which may wreak havoc on more than a few political careers and reputations. This has even the potential to radically shake up the tired old political landscape, possibly leaving Ireland with a party structure reflecting the real divisions of opinion in the country. “They are all the same” is the helpless cry of many Irish electors going to the polls in recent years – followed by “one is worse than the other but I can’t trust any of them”. Apart from the tragedy of the unborn which this current debacle represents, there is for many the further erosion of all trust in the political class.

On the personal level Enda Kenny is already smarting under his newly earned title as “the abortion Taoiseach”. The long culture war ahead for the life of the unborn in Ireland will only serve to harden it for posterity. For a large segment of Irish people Kenny is now joining Quisling, Petain and some others in history’s Hall of Infamy.

An immodest, “dangerous” and deeply “dishonest” proposal

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment
Ireland’s Pro Life civil rights politics back on the streets?

Following the Irish Government’s publication last night of the Heads of the Bill – preliminary draft for legislation – on abortion, the country’s Pro Life Campaign has dismissed the Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s reassurances that the law will be restrictive.

The Bill provides for abortion on the ground of threatened suicide with three doctors certifying the abortion.

Cora Sherlock, Deputy Chairperson of the Ireland’s Pro Life Campaign reminded the Campaign’s followers this morning that it was a very sad day  for her country. “For the first time an Irish Government has launched a proposal to introduce abortion.”

But, rallying the Campaign’s troops, she reminded them that the law had not yet been passed. “They haven’t succeeded yet. And so our job remains the same. Together we must redouble our efforts, never lose heart and continue our engagement with politicians, the media and the wider public. We will be dignified, respectful but insistent at all times.

“On days like this, we remember the nobility of the pro-life cause. There will be irritants, provocations and frustrations. But the more dignified and persistent we are in these days, the more our cause will benefit into the future.

“Don’t be disheartened. Each of us has a part to play. Today is the first day of a new and sustained fight on behalf of the unborn and their mothers.”

Commenting on the release of the Heads of the Bill, Caroline Simons of the Pro Life Campaign said:

“The Taoiseach and Minister Reilly have been talking up the proposal as very restrictive. But, in reality, these reassuring noises are empty and misleading. What matters is what’s contained in the Bill and what’s in the Bill is dangerous. For the first time an Irish government is proposing to introduce a law that provides for the direct intentional targeting of the life of the unborn child.

“Talk of the legislation being ‘life-saving’ is simply dishonest. There is no evidence that abortion ever helps women’s mental health and in fact it may damage women. It’s astounding that the Fine Gael leadership has caved in to Labour, allowing ideology to win out over evidence.

“The two-panel six-doctor proposal for signing off on abortions is utter nonsense. All it takes is three pro-choice doctors to sign off on every request and all restrictiveness is gone. It is an insult to women and their unborn babies to pretend that it could operate in an evidence-based manner.

“The Government has claimed all along that there is no option but to legislate. This is untrue. If the Government were really concerned about protecting women’s lives and respecting the unborn, we would have appropriate guidelines drawn up to assist doctors in various cases. The law already protects good medicine and life-saving treatments.

“If the Government continues to press ahead with the proposed legislation, we cannot continue to airbrush the reality of what abortion entails in countries where it is legal. There has been a huge spotlight on Ireland’s abortion laws but the public deserves to know what’s going on in other countries before any final decision is taken on the matter.”

Folly and deceit in hot pursuit of abortion on demand

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

The folly and the duplicity behind the drive of the Irish pro-abortion machine is well and truly exposed in an article by a lawyer and psychiatrist in today’s Irish Times, so much so that one just wants to cry out to them, “why don’t you just come clean and tell us that your demand for legislation to allow abortion on the grounds of threatened suicide is because this is the surest way to get abortion on demand.” This is what is very clear from Enda Hayden’s article and if the other Enda (Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister) cannot see the trap he is being walked into by his socialist deputy, Eamon Gilmore, then he is either very stupid or pretending to be stupid.

Hayden states, after reviewing all the professional expertise on the matter, that “even following comprehensive assessment and reassessment by highly experienced and competent psychiatrists, it is not possible to confirm, on balance of probabilities, that threats of suicide due to an unwanted pregnancy will lead to completed suicide. Any perceived real and substantial threat to the life of the pregnant mother, by suicide, is not a permanent state, but rather a crisis that will resolve and is amenable to intervention.”

Furthermore, an added fallacious element in the pro-abortionists campaign is expose by Hayden when he observes that the clinical realities he explores in his article do not lend themselves to restrictions imposed by any statute providing for threat of suicide as a ground for abortion. For example, he points out, if threat of suicide in pregnancy were to be accepted as posing a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother, why should any time limit apply in respect of abortion if the spirit of such statutory provision is to save the life of the mother?

“If a time limit were to be imposed on provision of abortion in such circumstances, how would this accord due recognition to the time required for comprehensive multifactorial assessment including assessment of response to treatment interventions? Should statutory provision for assessment of response to treatment be dispensed with in order to expedite and simplify matters?

“Assuming statutory provision for a second opinion by a suitably qualified professional in respect of the suicidality assessment process, what implications might this have for compliance with time limits, assuming such were to be provided for by statute? In the event of a “psychiatric emergency”, would the opinion of just one medical practitioner that abortion is immediately necessary to save the life of the mother suffice in order to procure an abortion?

“What is the legal capacity of a pregnant mother to provide informed consent to an abortion in situations where she is emotionally overwhelmed to the extent that her judgment is impaired, and how is this addressed and over what time period? This is not a theoretical question but a common clinical reality for psychiatrists treating patients with a diagnosis of emotionally unstable personality disorder, a diagnosis particularly associated with risk of crises during pregnancy. The absence of informed consent is fertile ground for litigation.”

All of which goes to place a huge question-mark over the work of the so-called “expert” group on which the Irish State is now basing its legislation. That group, if it had been expert in any way, would have analysed all these things and would have questioned the entirely spurious Irish Supreme Court judgement on the “X” case which set this suicide threat up as an unquestioned medical principle – without any medical evidence to back it up.

But the truth is – and this would probably be exposed if any media organisation interested in the truth took the trouble to query its deliberations under freedom of information legislation – that this expert group was a tool of a government and its Health Service Executive which wanted, by hook or by crook, to get legislation for abortion on demand on Ireland’s statute books, ignoring its own formal terms of reference to ensure that it gave its masters the results they wanted.

A truly draconian law in the offing

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters, Faith MattersLeave a comment
Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film on the inviolable seal of Confession, “I Confess”.

At the very heart of freedom is freedom of religion – and at the very heart of religious freedom is freedom of conscience.

The Irish Government has just published a piece of draft legislation which places a time bomb in this very heart, and if the legislation is enacted it will blow a people’s freedom to smithereens.

Is that first assertion too much? No. Every freedom which has been won for mankind, by mankind, over millennia of our history shows that where freedom was truly won it was won essentially in the context of a freedom of religion and the right to freedom and integrity of personal conscience. Freedoms won by forces hostile to religion – the freedoms won by the French Revolution, the freedoms won by the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution – have invariably ended in tyranny and have never succeeded in establishing authentic freedom until they have recognised the need for freedom of religion and conscience.

In contrast with the tyrannies which emanated from those struggles for freedom you have the greatest freedom of all, that won by Christians through centuries of persecution by the slave-owning and humanly deluded powers of the ancient world. In more modern times you have the great freedom won by the enslaved races of the 18th and 19th centuries, a struggle driven above all by a Christian consciousness of injustice. Accepted, history is more nuanced than this, but nevertheless the core truth is undeniable. Without recognition of the inviolability of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, the pursuit of freedom will be fatally flawed and will promise only tyranny.

The Irish government, seeking to deal with the problem of protecting children from abuse by adults, has now gone down this very path. In its proposed legislation it not only ignores freedom of religion and conscience but directly denies it head-on. It is promising to penalise and imprison any Catholic priest who does not report to the relevant secular authorities a sinful act for which a penitent sinner seeks the forgiveness of God as promised to him, as he believes, by the teaching of Jesus Christ. This is not stated explicitly in the draft but will be the inevitable outcome if the legislation is enacted.

Ominously the Irish Times reports today, “The Department of Justice was unable to confirm last night whether priests will be legally obliged to report serious offences against children to gardaí (police) that are disclosed during Confession.” That is a lame and disingenuous kicking to touch. This issue has been in focus for several months now and a number of government ministers have gone on record saying that the so-called sacred seal of confession no longer stands as a legal entity. Justice Minister Alan Shatter confirmed the mandatory reporting requirement would apply to priests hearing confession. Some priests have already proclaimed their defiance in defence of the freedom of conscience of those who come to them as penitents.

In this proposed legislation the State has effectively invaded a sacred realm of the religion of Christians and has countermanded that power which Christian believers understand to have been given by Christ when he said, “whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins you shall retain they are retained.”  What the State does not recognise in this whole matter is that while the same act may be both a sin and a crime, these two things have to be resolved in separate ways and in separate fora. A Catholic person accused, convicted and condemned to death for murder, innocent or not, may go to Confession before his execution. The priest who hears that confession might, by revealing all he had been told by the penitent, redeem that person’s reputation. Even to achieve that justice, he may not do so. The two realms are absolutely separate and the priest’s silence about what was confessed must also be absolute.

By invading this realm of conscience in this way the Irish State has now taken away the freedom of a sinner to get the absolution promised by God because it has radically changed the terms and conditions for that absolution – that is, the secrecy given to the act of confession by the wisdom and teaching of the Catholic Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as that sinner’s religious faith leads him to believe.

Let there be no doubt about it. This is a draconian law, posturing as a necessary law under the shadow of the crimes of child abuse with which Irish society, among others, has been plagued for over 40 or 50 years. It is also a bad law, penally hostile to the practice of the religious faith of the majority of the citizens of Ireland. The fact that a draconian executive is not running the country – although some might dispute that – is irrelevant. For nearly 300 years the Roman Empire had penal laws against Christians in place. For most of that time Christians were free to practice their religion but periodically the executive power of the time deemed that they were bad citizens by practising their faith and moved murderously against them. The pattern has been repeated many times throughout history whenever and wherever laws of this type came into being. Ireland beware.

Ireland: from the bottom, everything is up

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters2 Comments

by Michael Kirke | posted on MercatorNet.com on Monday, 22 November 2010

How much the current Irish banking and public finances debacle is going to contribute to a pan-European or even global conflagration remains to be seen. Whether or not the Irish troubles are going to engulf Portugal, Spain and God knows who else in a financial tsunami is a matter for the prophets of doom – and there are plenty of them around – to work out.

The worry is that this crisis may end up being a much greater catastrophe on a global level that it is for Ireland itself. We can only hope that the measures which have now been put in place, the funding from the IMF and the oversight that goes with it, will be sufficient to dampen the shockwaves.

The scale of what has happened is greater than any single event since Ireland secured her political separation from Great Britain nearly 100 years ago. The consequences of these events may change the political landscape of the Irish Republic in a way which many have longed for for decades while the historically burdened system has remained as doggedly in place as her beautiful mountain ranges in Connemara or Killarney. As Dermot Desmond, one of Ireland’s leading financiers, one who has come through this debacle with his reputation unscathed and his wealth intact, said recently, “The era of Civil War politics, passed on as a family business across generations, must be laid to rest.”

But while we may describe the events of the past three years as a debacle, it is wrong to describe them as a catastrophe. Real catastrophes cause permanent and irreparable damage and destruction. There is no doubt but that fortunes have been lost – for the most part by the foolish. There is no doubt there will be a degree of hardship for innocent bystanders. But in the longer term these are all things from which we can recover.

In the lead-up to the final capitulation of the Irish Government to the inevitable on Sunday night – its request for international assistance, with strings attached – a great deal of attention has been paid to the so-called shame and humiliation of a proud nation which won its independence at such a high cost.

There has been something of a grand delusion about Ireland’s vaunted sovereignty. Cries of woe uttered by Brendan O’Neill or Mick Hume in Spiked over the past few days — bewailing the arrival of the men in black from the IMF and the ECB — was media romanticism. For most Irish, talk about the nameless, faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats taking control of a freedom-loving little island on the western European seaboard is nonsense.

The plain people of Ireland saw the matter in a much more practical light. A group of incompetent politicians who had been badly served by their own nameless, faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats have had to surrender a measure of their control to a (hopefully) competent team of bureaucrats who will be no more nameless or faceless than those they will now have reporting to them.

Pride has been hurt but the Irish will “get over it and get on with it.” They are a resilient people. They are not afraid of emigration. They have been doing it for two centuries and are used to it. There are 80 million of them around the world. This reality is part of what gained Ireland its second place after Singapore in the globalisation world rankings a handful of years ago. Independence is a delusion. Mutual dependence is what has come clearly into focus as a result of all these events.

An illustration of Ireland’s and Britain’s mutual dependence was brought into focus in the Westminster Parliament last week when Chancellor George Osborne revealed that Ireland is the biggest market for British exports. Ann Marie Hourihane pointed out in The Irish Times: “[I]n 2009 Ireland bought a total of £23,767 million in British goods and services. That was £15,918 million in goods and £7,849 million in services. More than Brazil, Russia, India and China. However, if you add Hong Kong’s figures to those of mainland China you get a total £24,370 million British goods imported there, so Ireland’s figure is marginally below that.”

British embassy statistics revealed details last summer about the extent of Irish participation and investment in the British economy – the number of Irish directors of British companies, for example – which reveal a very different picture from one of proud and splendid isolation. As Hourihane commented, “They provide George Osborne with a good reason for offering us a big loan and they provide us with a very good reason for grabbing George Osborne and holding on tight.”

“It is not just true,” she added, “that Ireland consumes Britain’s food, its fashion, its football and the fun and rudeness of its tabloid culture, its golf, its opera productions, its West End shows, its Formula One, Downton Abbey and Masterchef – we are part of it.”

Dermot Desmond has remarked that Ireland’s success since the foundation of the State is often best observed from outside rather than from within. In an address in Dublin he pointed out that “We are an island nation with real spirit which has time and again fought against and dealt with enormous economic challenges. Today is no different and to appreciate those challenges we should examine the facts of the current situation and not the emotion. Today Ireland exports total €84 billion compared to 1990 when our exports were €18 billion. The growth in technology and other knowledge-based sectors has driven the success of Ireland.”

He recognised that the boom we have just experienced created an unsustainable bubble in property but holds that “the fundamentals of our position in 20 years have been undeniably transformed. Debt to GNP in 1987 was almost 125 per cent and it took almost one-third of the tax take to pay for the interest alone. Mistakes may be painful to bear witness to, but they are incredibly valuable if learned from.”

Another pundit, Agnes Aylward, recalled something from history which she saw as very pertinent to the situation facing Ireland today. Over 150 years ago, Thomas Francis Meagher first publicly unveiled the flag which would subsequently become the Irish Tricolour. Within a year of doing so he was tried and sentenced to death for his part in the failed Young Ireland rising of July 1848. That sentence was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life in Van Diemen’s Land, modern-day Tasmania.

Before his deportation, he wrote to a friend about the future. It was the darkest of times in Ireland, which was just emerging from a famine which had taken the lives of millions. But he wrote: “Yet I do not, could not despair of her regeneration. Nations do not die in a day. Their lives are reckoned by generations, and they encompass centuries. Their vitality is inextinguishable… Greece has so outlived her ruins and her woes. Italy has so outlived her degeneracy and her despotisms. Thus too, shall Ireland survive all her sufferings, her errors and disasters, and rear one day an ‘Arch of Triumph’ high above the wreck and wilderness of the past. This is my sincere faith.”

Ireland did so and the Irish have no doubt but that the darkness they are experiencing now will give way to a much brighter future.

A New Dawn on the Island of Ireland?

On By Michael KirkeIn National and International AffairsLeave a comment

It might be the end of a 30 year war, a 400 year war or an 800 year old war. But whichever it is it was about as muddled an end as you will find in many a war as far as winners and loser are concerned. We are all winners – because it is over – and we are all losers because it should never have started in the first place. Dr. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, yesterday’s men par excellence, finally met and agreed to let the forces of normal – well, fairly normal – political life fall into place in the six Ulster counties which make up the political entity of Northern Ireland.

Some would say it all began a little over 800 years ago in the distant feudal past when a disgruntled king of an Irish province asked Henry II of England to help him in his row with one of this neighbours. Others might put the key date at exactly 400 years ago when the leaders of the last great rebellion of Gaelic and Catholic Ireland came to an end with the flight of its leaders from the shores of Donegal. It was essentially a tragic event, recorded in Irish history as the Flight of the Earls. It is not a little ironic that this event is being commemorated nationally in Ireland this very year. For others it is a 30 year war of unfinished business left over after the Anglo Irish settlement of 1922.

Whatever it was, Irishmen on both sides of the so-called “Border”, Irishmen across the Irish Sea, English, Scottish and Welshmen on either side of the same sea – the largest single group of non Irish-born residents in the Republic of Ireland are British – have longed for this peace. They do not mind too much that it came in the end, not with a bang but with a whimper. This kind of peace comes better in this way.

Now ordinary men and women can get down to work and think about the ordinary needs of normal people. Dr. Paisley – with his phantom-dread of a united Ireland ruled from Rome – and Gerry Adams with his equally grotesque myth of a tyrannical British State occupying the sacred land of Ireland and oppressing its innocent people can now fade into the shadowy past where they belong. Nevertheless, some gratitude is owing to them in their later incarnations: they helped create two monsters but in the end they came good and have successfully chained them up again. Hopefully they will stay there. Real and unqualified credit, however, must go to the Prime Ministers of the two states which have had to suffer the consequences of the terror unleashed by these two monsters on their respective island jurisdictions – Tony Blair and Bertie Aherne. Both should surely be high on any short-list of contenders for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Their efforts have not only been supremely skilful but also truly heroic.

The business of containing death-inflicting terror on the island of Ireland can now be left behind. Sadly for Britain, no sooner has one source of terror gone than another raises it ugly head. However, the peoples of these two islands can now get together again to pursue their common economic interests and the business of life, sharing their common heritage of language and literature, institutions and laws,  and in the mutual enjoyment of their glorious differences – sport, music, native languages and customs.

While the undoubted event of the week was that “Meeting”, there were a few other events which seemed to contain a not-unrelated symbolic significance, pointing to the reality of our shared culture. The first was the investiture – if that is the right word – of Bono of U2 with a knighthood by Her Majesty the Queen of England. In Ireland, if you say “the Queen”, some will ask you, “which queen?”

For the other event we have to go all the way across the Atlantic and down to the shores of the Caribbean. There, in Guyana, the English cricket team faced the Irish (that is, island of Ireland) cricket team in the World Cup. Unsurprisingly England won – although as one of Ireland’s first cricket players, the Duke of Wellington, famously said of the Battle of Waterloo, it might have been “a damn close run thing”.

The irony and symbolic significance of the event runs right through it. The Irish team consists of a mixture of native born Irishmen and British Commonwealth citizens living and working in Ireland, while the English team consists of native born Englishmen, not a few from the same Commonwealth and probably the best cricketer Ireland has ever produced – well, at least since the Duke of Wellington – Irishman Edmund Joyce.

If all that doesn’t give us a glorious confusion of identity to rejoice in what will? But it is not confusion. It is what we are that matters and gives us our true identity. The truth is that what the people of these two islands have in common far outweighs our differences – differences about which we sometimes share a joke but which in the end we really value. Narrow nationalistic preoccupations with what we think we were, should be or might have been is – as sad experience shows – the stuff of poison cocktails.

– Michael Kirke