WE WERE once a notoriously introspective people, given to examining the national conscience at every hand's turn.
We haven't yet kicked the habit, but it now takes an event of some importance to set us talking about how we see ourselves.
The opening of Teilifis na Gaeilge on Thursday night was such an event. The Reynolds libel trial in London, which is likely to end next week, is another.
The opening of the television station challenges us to come clean about a murky past in which the Irish language was used to exclude some people and to provide others with a path to power.
It also invites us to look ahead, to the place that Irish will have 10, 20 or 50 years now, in a hostile environment in which survival - let alone growth - cannot be guaranteed.
The Reynolds case or, to be more precise, its coverage here, reminds us of a time we should have put behind us, when every contact with England or the English set us mulling over old grievances and the 800 years of oppression.
To some who have been in London to write or broadcast on the proceedings in the High Court it is as if, with his libel action against the Sunday Times, Albert Reynolds is not only looking for massive damages but carrying on the fight for Irish freedom by legal means.
So we have reporters who ought to know better comparing the courtroom and its occupants to an Ealing comedy, as though the whole show were put on for their benefit.
The judge and lawyers, they say, have come straight from central casting none of them can pronounce Ceann Comhairle.
When Emily O'Reilly discovers that there's an all English jury, it seems the cards are stacked against us. (In my day, the juries were always half Hungarian.)
In The Irish Times Mr Reynolds is compared to Parnell. And for a while it looks as if the Casements diaries, or the Pigot forgeries, are about to be produced from some lawyer's carrier bag.
But all the Sunday Times can run to is a basket of criticism from the Irish papers which Mr Reynolds, the most litigious leader in modern politics, says he hasn't read.
If the criticism of Mr Reynolds in the Irish papers was ignored by the former Taoiseach and his cheerleaders, the criticism of Willie O'Dea by James Price QC was not.
MR O'DEA, you may remember, exercised skills on the witnesses appearing before the Dail committee which investigated the collapse of the Fianna Fail Labour government.
Well, Mr Justice French in the High Court in London said he couldn't understand him and Mr Price, who appears for the Sunday Times, giddily suggested elocution lessons.
It was a foolish patronising suggestion, and Mr Price duly issued a statement in which he apologised for it.
But not before Jim Kemmy had rumbled to Mr O'Dea's defence, supported by a squad of commentators, eager to share in the insult.
For a moment all ears tuned to Limerick: the city has more accents than rugby clubs, and the dividing lines mark boundaries of class and sport.
(Its favourite rugby song, There Is An Isle, wasn't written by a Limerick writer or about Limerick. But then Faith Of Our Fathers, now top of the pops, wasn't written by an Irishman or about Ireland.)
Jim listed local lads made good - Richard Harris, Terry Wogan and David Hanly, all with clear accents - and the commentators threw in their tuppenceworth for Willie, the man in the cap.
Both Joe Duffy, on RTE, and Jonathan Philbin Bowman in the Sunday Independent, seem to have spoken to those on Mr Reynolds's side before reporting on the decision of the Sunday Times not, to call a witness, Fergus Finlay.
"Reynolds Roasts Spring's Chicken" was the heading on Philbin Bowman's piece in which he, wrote of Mr Finlay: "He was chicken, a beaming Reynolds said outside, suggesting that after watching, the roasting of Alan Ruddock (former Irish editor of the Sunday Times), the Chicken Finlay couldn't take it."
Duffy, said by Philbin Bowman to have turned into the "Gary O'Toole of jurisprudence during this trial", was only slightly less dismissive on RTE.
In the Sunday Independent's stablemate, the Sunday Tribune, Helen Callanan wrote: "Regardless of what anyone thinks of the former Taoiseach, friends and adversaries alike squirmed at the thought of Finlay having volunteered to assist an Australian/British/American media magnate's case against an Irishman in a British court."
There you have it: while some representatives of the Irish media reach for their green flags, others have eyes on a different target, the international media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Sunday Times.
Do they forget that their own employer is also a media magnate with interests in Britain, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (though his US interests are in a different industry)?
DO THEY not recognise a trace of Times's cynicism in their own publications?
The Sunday Independent last week carried an excellent article on the trial by Gene Kerrigan the Sunday Tribune had an equally well made piece by Ann Marie Hourihane.
The Sunday Times, which printed different reports on the FF Labour collapse in its British and Irish editions, may not be the only paper which tries to have it both ways.
And doesn't anyone consider it important to tell the truth, whatever the nationality of the parties contesting the case?
The aggressive environment dominated by the O'Reillys and the Murdochs is the one in which Teilifis na Gaeilge must survive, and I wish it - and the new Irish language newspaper, Foinse - success.
I've had it in my mind for some time to pay a journalistic tribute to Radio na Gaeltachta and to such RTE programmes as Cursai and An Nuacht.
It's easy to forget how Irish music grew and flourished from the seeds sown by Sean ORiada, Sean MacReamoinn, Seamus Ennis and Ciaran MacMathuna with the help of the new medium, radio.
In a more hostile climate let's hope that Cathal Goan and his young team enjoy a vigorous and argumentative life. Listeners to radio will still find stimulation in Seo Beo an tSathairn and quiet pleasure in Liam Mac an Iomaire's Leagan Cainte.
IVAN YATES must be wondering what he did to deserve all this. He is going through a bad patch. And a three day council meeting in Luxembourg this week, including an all night session, hardly improved his health or his humour.
Close observers of politics were interested in the announcement last weekend of the Government's intention to set up a National Food Safety Board. This was no surprise - it had no option.
What was more interesting, and even intriguing, was the fact that the announcement was made not by the Minister for Agriculture or the Minister for Health or the Minister for Consumer Affairs, but by the Minister for Defence, Sean Barrett.
What he has to do with food safety eludes Drapier, but the explanation appears to be that there is ill feeling between Ivan and Michael Noonan over a television appearance by Ivan in which he was perceived not to have been sufficiently supportive of Noonan. The compromise, probably worked out by John Bruton, was to have the announcement made by what might be called "a neutral".
The food board decision was ratified by the Cabinet on Wednesday morning and a press conference arranged for that afternoon. But the necessary preparation was not done and Michael Noonan, who was to host the press conference, cancelled it. Michael is getting cautious after his recent problems.
Before this board is established there will be plenty of what is called aground hurling" between the Departments of Health and Agriculture and their Ministers. There will be overtones of a GAA football final about some of the exchanges, except that they will in this case go on in the dressing room and there will be no televised action replays. This will not lessen the intensity of the struggle.
The IFA and Brian Cowen tried to draw Dick Spring into the beef row by criticising what they regard as his inaction on the matter and particularly his reluctance to go to Iran. Dick was not having it and told the IFA where to go with its complaint. Jimmy Deenihan, the farmer's friend, must have been delighted.
Ten or 20 years ago a Minister would have been much slower to tell the IFA, or any of the other farmer organisations to get lost.
The fact is that the IFA are now losing their clout. Firstly, it is going because there are fewer and fewer farmers and their economic and political significance is diminishing. Secondly, they have cried wolf so often, and get so incensed so frequently, that the bulk of the population pays less and less attention to them with every passing year. They fail to realise the resentment so many non farmers have of the high level of farm subsidies from Brussels.
POOR Ivan's problems are not confined to beef. The Consumers' Association of and produced a report which showed excessive residues of antibiotics in 17 per cent of our pork. The Department of Agriculture said it knew about this all along - it had got its own report - but it neglected to tell the public about it. Drapier wonders if it told Ivan. Why did it keep so quiet?
The timing of the inquest in Belfast on the unfortunate young man who died from a new variant of CJD could hardly have been worse.
But it is not all dark days for our hard working and pressurised Ministers. Michael D. had a great time this week with the Teilifis na Gaeilge opening in Co Galway, it appeared to have a lively and successful opening night. We are told there were 500 invited guests and that practically everybody asked turned up to the hooley, except Charlie Haughey.
There appears to be no shortage of money for TnaG, and RTE is looking on enviously. RTE is still smarting from the fact it was excluded from TnaG.
Not so long ago we had one channel from one station. We now have three Irish channels from two stations and we are awaiting TV3. Whether or not that gets off the ground next year remains to be seen because its viability is in some doubt because of UTV's withdrawal. With all the British channels, and Sky and the satellite channels, nobody can complain about lack of choice. It is healthy.
We have to wait another week for the final outcome of Albert Reynolds's libel action in London against the Sunday Times. Albert is perhaps the most prolific libel litigant in the country, and he has four or five successful claims under his belt. He even settled an action against Radio Tara while the London case was going on.
But the Sunday Times is refusing to settle. If it is successful, it may encourage others to resist in future. If it is not, Albert has promised to sue various Irish newspapers, whose comments on him he had failed to read up to now, he told the London court. The press barons of Ireland must be keeping their fingers crossed on behalf of the Sunday Times, lest the most defumed man in Ireland strikes again.
THE principal interest here in the case, apart from the deficiencies in Willie O'Dea's accent, was why the Sunday Times decided at the last minute not to call Fergus Finlay, who was present and, he assures us, rearing to go.
He deeply resented the mutterings of "chicken" from the Reynolds camp after the newspaper's lawyers decided not to put him on the stand. Why is unclear. Fergus would have been a nice contrast to Albert in the witness box for the London jury, which must be fairly mystified by now. Fergus would have been unlikely to manage the tears which were such a prominent part of the Reynolds case.
There are many around Leinster House who would not have thought Albert was such a sensitive soul.