Sarah Harte: Do new Irish citizens need to know more about what it means to be Irish?

What it means to be Irish, of course, is open to a wide variety of interpretations

David Puttnam after receiving his Irish Citizenship along with his wife Patsy in Killarney. Picture: Sally MacMonagle

When words like ‘crackdown’ and ‘fester’ are hanging in the ether, it’s hard not to feel depressed. At least our public discourse hasn’t been degraded to the extent that senior politicians feel able to compare migrants, as former American president and card-carrying idiot Donald Trump did at the weekend, to Hannibal Lecter, claiming that they’re all escaping from ‘insane asylums’. 

But it was a relief last Friday to hear Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Paschal Donohoe, say that we should not lose sight of the positives of openness and people coming here.