As I went through Dublin Airport last Saturday evening, on my way home from a visit to northern Syria (more on which at a later date), the garda on duty at passport control returned my (British) passport with the words, “Thank you, David. Welcome back”.
This happens every time at Dublin Airport: and not just to me, as my Ireland-based, English travelling companion was quick to point out. The police officer had only extended a simple courtesy, I know, but where else would you get it? Certainly not at any other airport I’ve ever been through.
Usually, if a passport controller deigns to even acknowledge a traveller, it is with an air of studied disdain or barely disguised menace.
Going home in the car, for the first time in years I was able to listen to a copy of the Sounds of the New West CD, which had been very kindly sent to me by Phil Lawlor, after I mentioned in this column that I had lost my original version. (Many thanks to Phil and to the other people who offered to send me a copy of this much-valued musical compilation.)
These are only a couple of snapshots from a virtual portfolio of thoughtful gestures that I have benefited from during my time in the South. Admittedly, I encounter incidental courtesies and deliberate kindnesses wherever I travel, but it is only in respect of Ireland that these could be said to amount to a national characteristic.
It is one of the things I love most about this country and about being Irish. At this point, most readers will be checking to see if I did indeed mention earlier that I travel on a British passport, which brings me not very neatly to another frequent experience of mine.
Although more of an attitude than a characteristic, there appears to be a widespread belief in the Republic that it is simply not possible to be both Irish and British – as if these were mutually exclusive concepts. According to this school of thought, identity must be singular, although it is never explained how such a notion can be applied to the many millions of people who happen to be Scottish, English or Welsh and also British.
Yet Ireland’s (until quite recently, enthusiastic) membership of the European Union suggested some degree of public acceptance that identity need not be narrowly defined. Moreover, the ready acknowledgement of Irish Americans as fully fledged members of the so-called diaspora also runs counter to the idea that Irish people struggle with the notion of dual or even multiple identities.
Does simply being British bar one from also being Irish, then? Not really, seeing as there is something of an eagerness to include famous British people of Irish descent (Irish-Britons) in the wider national family. And not just those capable of augmenting the national football team.
So what is it that has even some of my Southern friends raising a quizzical eyebrow when, on the odd occasion, I have stated that I consider myself to be as Irish as they are, and British as well? Is it only me? Not quite, but possibly people of my ilk. It seems that only those from Northern Ireland who claim to be British are, to many Southern minds, automatically excluded from being Irish. But even that isn’t strictly true. Consider the furore there was in some sections of the media in the South when Northern golfer Rory McIlroy let it slip that he had always considered himself to be British, and indicated that he intends playing for Britain rather than Ireland in the next Olympic Games.
It was obviously assumed that as someone raised a Catholic, McIlroy should have declared for Ireland. The issue of who the North’s other two famous golfers, Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell, might choose to play for was never raised.
That Clarke and McDowell are both from Protestant backgrounds was the obvious difference. McIlroy was considered something of a traitor; the other two were not even considered relevant to the question.
So, it would seem that Americans, UK-based Britons, and virtually anyone else from around the world that feels inclined to, are permitted to claim an Irish identity, while the northern British Protestant is not.
It would be easy to attribute this attitude to conscious sectarianism, but my experience of people in the Republic tells me that, except in a tiny minority of cases, this is decidedly not the case (sectarians do not greet members of another religion warmly at the airport or send them gifts), although I do believe it stems from the sectarianism of times past.
Over centuries, it has become ingrained in the Irish Catholic psyche that a Protestant born on the island cannot be considered authentically Irish. And since partition, that a Northern Protestant can’t be Irish to any degree.
A majority of the population of the Republic appears determined to create a secular society. Central to achieving this will be an acceptance that every person born in Ireland fully belongs here, and is the sole definer of his or her identity.