GIVE ME A BREAK:WHEN TENS of thousands were emigrating from Ireland in the 1980s I was that crazy lone goose who got lost flying in the opposite direction. I chose to make a life here at a time when the place was a basket case.
Now it’s 30 years later, I have three Irish children, and Ireland is a basket case once again. One of them has a 15th birthday tomorrow, on St Patrick’s Day, and her middle name is Patricia – how’s that for patriotism?
I do love Ireland, but these days how do I convince my kids we shouldn’t hightail it back to the US? I’ve compiled a little list of reasons to be grateful, just in case.
Drink: green vodka jellies, green alcopops, Jägerbombs, anything as long as it’s mixed with Red Bull. And it’s the best excuse ever invented, always accepted by polite society – even in court.
Sense of humour: electric car chargers are being made available to the public in Dublin, even though nobody knows anyone who actually owns an electric car.
Denial: nobody does it better. Paedophile priests? Wasn’t happening 30 years ago. How could we have known what child rape actually involved?
Music: U2! Enya! The Irish Tenors! What’s not to like?
Rip-offs: the consumer price index has fallen recently in a time of recession, which just proves the point that we were being overcharged during the good times. It’s always nice to know you were right all along.
Soft weather: from Bloody Foreland to Loop Head to Belfast Lough and the Irish Sea, we enjoy a mild climate. We’re unlikely to be typhooned or tsunamied or tornadoed. No heat rash, no droughts or famines, just a wee bit of flooding on occasion – and those enormous heating bills.
No water charges: water is an endless resource. Ads on the radio even promote recycling by telling us to “rinse” plastics before dumping them in the green bin, which just proves how much water we have. Forget those water shortages in January – that was only local government warming us up to hit us with water charges in the future, which we shall surely resist. For now at least, water is free, unlike the drink.
Cheap dairy products: more milk, cheese and butter than we can eat, more than enough to give us heart disease and obesity levels among the highest in Europe, but who cares? He who loves cheese dies happy.
Irish cuisine: pizza, pasta, burgers, kebabs, ciabatta – whatever it is you’re having, we’ll put a shamrock on it.
Red hair: can we possibly market this better? A joint promotion with L’Oréal, perhaps? We need more red-headed children in green frocks at the crossroads if we’re going to promote Ireland properly. A tax allowance for cute children with pet donkeys and carts would be a step forwards.
Loyalty: no one is more loyal than the Irish, and millions of Americans claim Irish heritage – let’s just tow this little island of Ireland over there and make it a suburb of New Jersey. We can teach them to drink.
Guilt: who can compete with the level of guilt induced by the Irish mother? Her own guilt, actually, as she struggles to cope in one of the worst childcare regimes in Europe.
Women know their place: women’s hourly earnings are 85 per cent of men’s, the Dáil is 86 per cent male, and recently the formal approval of 30 diplomatic candidates for posts abroad rendered only three women. A proposed Seanad debate on the underpresentation of women in politics to mark International Women’s Day never happened. In our boardrooms, 16 per cent of partners are female. Only one Irish law firm has a female managing partner, despite the fact that the majority of entry-level solicitors are female. Women know when it’s time to call it quits and go home to have babies.
Peace: we’re not currently at war, and our home-grown terrorists have reformed, though we may occasionally harbour terrorists from other countries, especially those who don’t appreciate the Swedish sense of humour.
No religious oppression: with the Catholic church in disrepute, we haven’t got Jesus fanatics and missionaries to contend with. The American promise ring, whereby daughters don’t have sex without their father’s permission, hasn’t hit here yet. We just take the social welfare payments away from single mothers instead.
No poisonous snakes: thank you, St Patrick. No white sharks, no mosquitos, no malaria.
Pots of gold: Stealth taxes. Nama. Who minds missing a mortgage payment or two when others owe tens of millions?
The Irish language: You can’t use it on holidays in the Med, but it’s a great party piece in the US.
Liberal attitudes: after long years of struggle, we now have contraception and divorce and that other little problem can be solved across the water.
When we go to the US, people say, “Oh my God, you’re Irish?” Instant friendship.
The best race horses in the world and the best cows: thanks to all that grass. And not the kind burned to the ground in head shops lately.