Irish fans at Euro 2016 - Well done, the fans in green

IT would take a particularly innovative and brave foreign policy wonk to suggest that the most effective way to project the very best of our country would be to send tens of thousands of our citizens to a football tournament in France.

While there they would, to cope with the oppressively warm, dehydration-inducing continental weather, wear shorts and show off the almost unequalled bluey, white Irish limbs to a population that may take matters of grooming and tanning a little more seriously than out-for-a-party Paddies.

Add the complication of unavoidably stiff security arrangements made inevitable by recent terrorist attacks in France. Complicate matters further by having to cope with the violent and boorish behaviour of English and Russian thugs who seem unable to behave even in a remotely civilised way, and you already have a heady, tinder-box mix.

But there’s more risk in this innovative win-their-hearts policy. Should our policy wonk, in a complete break with the norms of diplomacy, suggest the application, over several weeks, of copious quantities of alcohol, that diplomat’s career might end without achieving a foreign posting.

Yet that is what happened and it has been a wonderfully positive and joyous adventure. Our football fans could not have represented us any better and their exemplary, happy-go-lucky behaviour has won many new friends for this country. Well done, the fans in green.