Suzanne Harrington: Happy St Patrick's Day - we've earned it

"A country unrecognisable from its very recent past, where misogyny was enshrined in law, children were bought and sold, hypocrisy and acquired blindness to truth a specialist Irish skill."

Suzanne Harrington: Ireland has changed radically in the middle-child period of history. Pic: Andrew Hasson

In historian Rutger Bregman’s 2017 manifesto for a better society, Utopia for Realists, he points out that despite the pebble dash of doom sprayed at us from every outlet, we – humanity– are in a better place than any other time in our history.

“In the past everything was worse,” he writes. “For 99% of the world’s history, 99% of humanity was poor, hungry, dirty, afraid, stupid, sick and ugly.” Today we have supermarkets, soap, schools, hospitals and lipstick. Living the dream, baby.