In 1992, the ludicrous English TV presenter and politician Robert Kilroy-Silk wrote a column in the Daily Express in which he referred to Ray MacSharry as a "redundant second-rate politician from a country peopled by peasants, priests and pixies," writes Fintan O'Toole.
We did our collective nut. On the State's behalf, Ireland's then ambassador to Britain, Joseph Small, condemned the "gratuitously offensive and indeed racist remarks".
In 1994, Michael Woods, then minister for social welfare, told the Dáil on behalf of the government that he deplored the "offensive remarks" of Daily Mail columnist Paul Johnson to the effect that: "The Irish exploit Britain's welfare state as a kind of patriotic duty." In 2003, Neville Sanders, the Tory leader of Peterborough council, was barred from holding political office because he had replied rudely to a letter from Carrickfergus council and had told the Belfast Telegraph that "The f***ing Irish should learn to live in peace and bloody well get on with it."
In the same year, the London Irish Centre called for a boycott of all the businesses owned by the English retailer Philip Green because he had complained about the Guardian's financial editor Paul Murphy with the words "He can't read English. Mind you, he's a f***ing Irishman." Twice in 2001, the then minister for foreign affairs, Brian Cowen, told the Dáil that the government endorsed a report that condemned anti-Irish prejudice in Britain and that: "Discrimination and disadvantage are as repugnant to the British government as they are to us. We remind them of the importance of sensitivity by public authorities towards the distinctive social and cultural characteristics of the Irish people with whom they have dealings. The embassy in London takes up with the British authorities specific instances of alleged anti-Irish racism or discrimination."
Last week, a Minister in the department that instructs the Irish embassy in London to do these worthy things made an entirely gratuitous remark belittling Turkish people as "kebabs".
The remark was not, as subsequently claimed, made "in the heat of the moment". It had no conceivable connection to the subject under discussion at the time - Aer Lingus. It was cool and deliberate and intended, in the context, to imply that the welfare of Turkish workers in Ireland was a piddling subject fit for the likes of Joe Higgins, who should therefore leave the big boys to debate important issues. And what was the reaction? Nothing. Conor Lenihan's boss, Dermot Ahern, told us within hours that the whole story was at an end.
And Conor Lenihan did not apologise for the offence he had caused. According to the official Dáil record, what he said was: "I regret the remarks made and I apologise sincerely if any offence was taken from the remarks." Note the if. But even this is, rather disturbingly, a cleaned-up version of what he actually said. In reality, he couldn't even manage to articulate his weasel words with any clarity. What he in fact said was: "I regret the remarks made and apologise sincerely if any cause or offence was taken from the remarks made." This may be a Freudian slip which reveals the underlying truth. The sentence is meaningless because the apology means nothing.
Imagine for a moment that a junior minister in Tony Blair's government had interrupted a debate on British aviation last week to tell an MP with ties to the Irish community in London that he should "stick with the spud-gobblers". The minister in question would have been gone before lunchtime. And if he wasn't, Irish outrage would have been revved up to a thunderous crescendo. Conor Lenihan's own department would, through the embassy in London, have been out with all guns blazing to remind the Brits of "the importance of sensitivity by public authorities towards the distinctive social and cultural characteristics of the Irish people".
Let's get this straight. Neville Sanders is officially unfit to be a member of a minor local council in England because he made some stupidly curmudgeonly remarks about the Irish peace process. Conor Lenihan is fit to be in charge of the major part of Irish relations with the developing world even though he chose to use our national parliament to belittle the people of one of those countries. This is not just a display of the grossest hypocrisy. It is also an indication of abject self-contempt.
It means that higher standards apply to the members of Peterborough council than to ministers in our sovereign government.
This makes us, by the way, more tolerant of racism than the Republican Party in the US or the Tories in Britain. Trent Lott, the former party's leader in the Senate, had to resign because he said some nice things about a segregationist politician.
Iain Duncan Smith sacked a member of his shadow cabinet, Ann Winterton, for joking that Pakistanis were "ten a penny". He did so, he said, to show that the Tories were "a decent party". We, on the other hand, are apparently not too bothered about offensive jibes - so long as they're not directed at the Irish. And that's a real slur on Ireland.