Who Do We Think We Are?

There IS a lot of loose talk about "identity" these days. Indeed, the disturbing notion that traditional Irish identity is actually dead was proposed at a recent conference in Dublin. My colleague Fintan O'Toole said that this newly-deceased Irish identity was "invented" at the foundation of the State and derived from a combination of land, nationality and religion. Not a word about drink, of course: it is very hard to face the truth about ourselves.

Anyway, it followed that a "real Irishman" was someone who lived on the land, was in Fianna Fail and who was a Catholic. "But none of this works any more, nor has it for some time," said Fintan. If traditional Irish identity is dead, we would like to know what happened it. Was it murdered in its sleep? Did it die of that faux-naif ailment, natural causes? Are we no longer the indomitable Irishry? Does it mean we have no identity at all any more? Are we mere wraiths?

It is all rather worrying. It may be a slight consolation that, as a professor suggested at the same conference, stereotypes such as Paddy the Drunk or Paddy the Urban Terrorist have been dumped in favour of Paddy the Icon of Cool. But however our identity appears to outsiders, it appears that we no longer know who we are in ourselves. It looks as if each (and every) one of us must now take on the self-appointed task of Stephen Dedalus, which that lazy egotist never finished, and forge in the smithy of our souls the uncreated conscience of our race. As if we hadn't enough to do, with Christmas on top of us and the millennium nonsense as well.

Meanwhile, the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace has urged, quite reasonably, that a national immigration service be set up. One of its functions would be to "explain Ireland to its immigrants and immigrants to the Irish".

This is all very well but our current ongoing identity crisis means that the more urgent necessity is to explain Ireland to the Irish. If we don't know who we are, how are we to explain ourselves to others?

Instead of addressing this dire need, we are running off in all directions to "sell" our country worldwide, whereas in fact, we do not even know what goods are in stock, psychologically and culturally, in the national shop. It is a curious way to do business. Just the other day our President, Mrs McAleese, trotted off on an official jaunt to Scotland, and this perfectly ordinary journey to a neighbouring country was played up in the media as if she were on a dangerous mission to forge new links with some exotic troubled Xanadu.

It's only Scotland, for God's sake. And despite difficulties with devolution, the place is not all that unstable. The insulting implication in the media was that we know nothing about our near neighbour. An editorial in this paper actually said that Scotland is "relatively unknown to most Irish citizens".

What rot. Just about every Irish person knows that Glasgow is a great town for drinking and fighting, that Edinburgh has a castle and that Aberdeen is home to the famous cow, the Angus. That is surely enough to be going on with. It's common knowledge also that the Scots play a decent game of rugby and to their further credit, drink almost as much as we do. The more cultured among us are further aware that Scotland is famous for Highlands, bagpipes, Hogmanay, stinginess, kilts, Sean Connery, oats, Bonnie Prince Charles, Scotch eggs, William Wallace and haggis. So much for Scotland being "relatively unknown" to us.

It would have served this proud nation better had Mrs McAleese gone to Scotland with a list of questions in her hand just to see how much the Scots know about the Irish. Indeed, she could just have faxed the list and saved us all money - and the Scots too. Any answers received should be of considerable use in constructing our new Irish identity.