World a much smaller and better place for Irish ‘semigrants’ today

ON FRIDAY evenings when I arrive home, tired, often hungry and dying to see the family after a week in London, an array of my compatriots line up to greet me. Some are well known and some are not known at all.

On the walk from flight to passport control at Dublin Airport I mentally salute the photographs on the walls — Michael D, Padraig Harrington, Mary McAleese, Mickey MacConnell, the cute red-haired freckle-faced child, the wizened old man with bright eyes.

The welcome home from these images is distinctly Irish. So too is the goodbye from Dublin Airport.