The day Ireland celebrates - Let’s change to secure a better future

Tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day. We will celebrate it with everything from a modest, dignified enthusiasm to an excuse for a no-holds-barred knees-up.

Reticence may be, as it so often is on these wearing o’ the green Donnybrooks, a stranger. All around the world people happy to acknowledge Irish heritage will tip their cap at their idea of what being of Ireland is.

This proves again that there at least as many ideas of what it is to be Irish as there are shades of green — no matter how sanded down by time that identification has become.

No matter how we choose to celebrate our national holiday, it is one of the few occasions we set aside our eternal what-ifs, our nagging sense that no matter how good things are, they could be better if only we did things differently and expected more of each other and of ourselves.

We celebrate the sum of things rather than the fractious struggle involved in bringing them together.

This year, calendar coincidences conspire to advance the entirely plausible argument that God is, in fact, an Irishman — or as Mary McAleese might suggest, an Irishwoman — or at the very least a reliable member of that scattered diaspora we place such faith in. We have had a good Cheltenham week, always an important barometer of the mood of the nation, and tomorrow at Twickenham we have an opportunity to enjoy what could be the most glorious icing on the cake though even articulating that possibility seems a fraught tempting of fate.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to underestimate how uplifting it would be, on a St Patrick’s Day, to cheer our 32-county team to win Ireland’s third Grand Slam by beating our nearest and occasionally troublesome neighbours in a sport they invented.

Especially as England’s Eddie Jones spiced the pot with his ill-judged “scummy Irish” remarks, an ignorant put-down that stings despite his no-option apology.

Whether or not a Twickenham victory would improve our 14th position in the World Happiness Report 2018, which was published yesterday is debatable.

However, it is far less likely that a loss would push us further down the Nirvana ladder. That survey, almost routinely a celebration of all things Nordic, suggested that happiness of a country is almost identical to the happiness of its immigrants — who are, after all, someone else’s diaspora.

That we are in 14th position despite a litany of difficulties must say something important. Are we happy to roll along despite failure in one area of public life after another?

Have we a happiness threshold informed by an enduring colonial culture of subservience rather than a set of ambitions modelled on Nordic idealism?

Do we, in our hearts of hearts, believe the health service will never, never

be fixed; that the banks will never be held to account; that An Garda Síochána won’t regain trust and respect?

Despite the fatalism underpinning those capitulations the Ireland of today, and the Irish of today, enjoy circumstances and stability, as well as material well-being and opportunity that in a historical context are unique.

This happy situation brings obligations, obligations to change and resolve resolvable difficulties so we can continue to celebrate being Irish. But first, Twickenham...