The news that, fresh from their resounding triumph in the Constitutional Referendum, 38 Government Ministers will be visiting 48 countries to celebrate St Patrick’s Day is a reiteration of all we know about them. Like a pickpocket in a nudist colony, “shame” has no meaning for them.
The smug and unapologetic tone of this new and secular Ireland was set in Boston where the Taoiseach declared that St Patrick was a migrant to Ireland – and moreover, a single, male undocumented one, who was probably British, and who had left his home as a free man to come to Ireland, bringing with him such dangerous foreign ideas such as Roman civilisation and Christianity. No doubt that ticks all the right boxes: migrant, check, civilised, check, foreign ideas, check, single male, very much check.
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