Suzanne Harrington: For 2024, can we retire 'Ireland for the Irish' nonsense please?

Yet in this era of unfiltered rage, unhinged ego and entrenched individualism, love within the community – the we rather than the I - has never been more urgent, more important.

Hello New Year and welcome. Glad you’re here, 2024 – as always, we can only hope that you turn out better than your predecessor. We say that ever year, before immersing ourselves in the annual January charade of getting thinner, fitter, leaner, faster, richer, as we focus inward on our eternal project – ourselves.

The late American author bell hooks didn’t have much time for such carry on, writing how she was “often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community”. She’s got a point. What is January, if not an invitation to bathe is solipsism? Dive deep into self-involvement and personal bests? Yet in this era of unfiltered rage, unhinged ego and entrenched individualism, love within the community – the we rather than the I - has never been more urgent, more important.

Even in good old Ireland, famously full of nice warm friendly community-minded people who win the Go Fund Me generosity first prize every year and are known worldwide for our famous Irish welcome – let’s not allow ourselves to be steered off course with that. Just because our neighbours on one side are having some kind of protracted Stop The Boats meltdown, and the ones across the wider stretch of water are considering the re-election of an actual madman in the coming year, doesn’t mean we too should ever shift our own goalposts so that we become adept at normalising the abnormal. We’re better than that.

We could start 2024 then by retiring perhaps the stupidest idea of 2023 - ‘Ireland for the Irish’. Whoever made that one up really didn’t think it through, did they – because if they had, they would have done some basic maths, and realised that if every other country where the Irish diaspora reside applied this same idea and sent us all back to Ireland, there’d be 70 million of us pouring through the airports. Cascading in like a burst pipe. Then Ireland really would be full. Migration is not a one-way street; the only difference between an ex-pat and a non-national is racism. If our housing and healthcare is in bad way, let’s look at why, rather than doing some Ireland-for-the-Irish fascist knee-jerk.

And while we’re having a New Year clear out, maybe we could give ‘influencer’ the boot too, both as a concept and a practice. In terms of community, the rise of the influencer says nothing good about us on any level. All it shows is our ongoing reverence for narcissism and entitlement. Also, they’re annoying, clogging up city pavements and holiday beaches, preening and sashaying in public spaces pretending that they’re actual celebs, as some amateur with a camera lollops after them. Yes, we all now have enough tech in our back pocket to film ourselves – that doesn’t make us movie stars; having an online following just means you’re good at being on your phone. Go home.

And, um, happy new year.