A new book, Being Irish, gathers together a diverse group of 100 people - the famous and the not famous, men and women, nationalists and unionists - to explore what it is to be Irish. Editor Paddy Logue's choice of essayists - from which a small selection follows - shows that you can be Irish by birth, Irish by ancestry, geography, with European links, by accident, by necessity, with British links, by association, by culture, by history, with American links, by choice. The insights are surprising and varied and reflect familiar themes as well as the new economy, cultural diversity and the global village.
"My family had more honourable reasons for leaving than yours did for staying," I once told the scion of a Galway merchant family who accused me of, "coming over here with your English, welfare state assumptions". But I knew I had let myself down by saying it, by feeling I had to. I had accepted the bigoted assumption that the value of your opinions depends upon your nationality.
Then, once I moved to Ireland, there was my family's yielding up of the stories which made sense of my want to be here. After I lost my job and decided to stay and work against unemployment rather than return to London, my sense of being Irish hardened from a feeling into a commitment, a loyalty. For the 12 years I worked with organisations campaigning against unemployment, people said my words "gave voice to the voiceless". Once, as I stood in O'Connell Street addressing the largest demonstration the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed ever organised, a drunk made his way to the front of the crowd. "Tell that Englishman to go back where he came from," he roared.
Now our streets, shops and cafs are filling up with French and Spanish and Nigerian and Romanian voices. We are deeply challenged to accept the participation of people with different voices in our society - without first submitting them to the test of their Irishness.