Thanks to the youth, I remain optimistic about our future

I AM INDEBTED to George Hook.

Not financially, of course, but for making me think. I was listening to his programme last week when he interviewed a man who had decided to bring his family back to Ireland after a number of years living abroad. This young man (I’m sorry I didn’t pick up his name), had written an article about the things he had discovered about the Ireland to which he had returned. The Luas and the disabled access in DART stations were just two of the things he mentioned.

And then I listened to George again, last Saturday morning and he had Tom McGurk on, talking about different strands of Northern nationalism. In his usual mild-mannered understated way, McGurk was blathering on about how different Northern Catholics were, depending on what part of Northern Ireland they were from. The only thing they might have in common, said he, was that no Northern nationalist worth his salt would want to have anything to do with this god-awful catastrophic monstrosity of a country down here.