Colm O'Regan: Along with funerals, hurling and crisps, our voting system is something that we do spectacularly well

Every so often, to paraphrase the poet Robert Burns, we get a chance to see ourselves as others see us. When an Irish person does well, we realise that the British press see us as a small quasi-independent principality (though they can’t remember which prince) but still part of Britain. Brexit revealed they saw us as independent but uppity for wanting to defend our interests. Saoirse Ronan’s Oscar nomination meant they saw us as being back to British. And the recent election revealed that people in other countries really didn’t understand us at all.

First of all there were fools who didn’t understand our Single Transferable Vote system. A young lad called Darren Grimes was on the BBC a lot talking about Irish politics. I think he was there on TYO work experience. He said in a tweet “Thank god for first past the post, Ireland’s electoral system is bloody confusing.” Imagine celebrating chewing the joyless Ryvita that is FPTP instead of glorying in the endless buffet of STV.