How Dev’s comely maidens look now

READING your series on Great Irish Speeches (September 20/21), the thought struck me as to how de Valera’s famous ‘comely maidens’ broadcast speech on St Patrick’s Day 1943 would have to be rewritten were it to be delivered today. So, with apologies to my late fellow-Limerickman ...

“That Ireland of which we once dreamt, was it to be the home of a people who’d value material wealth as the only right way of living, of a people who could never be satisfied with the frugal comfort of a mere single-car existence but who would devote all of their leisure time to commuting to and from their multinational-owned workplace ...

“A land whose countryside would be bright with garish holiday homes, whose fields would be rapidly replaced by oversized shopping centres and clanking industrial estates; whose every city, town and village would be busy with the rompings of underage drinkers, the fighting contests of athletic young men and the random pukings of comely maidens shooting up at the crossroads?”