Time to grow up and bury the patriot dead

AMERICA, like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain, has absorbed millions of Irish emigrants, most of whom went on to repay that ‘debt’ by adding immeasurably to the vibrancy of life in their adopted countries.

Very few of them look back in anger at the circumstances or general poverty which made emigration not just an attractive proposition but an historical inevitability.

And just like migrants or colonists everywhere, they had their fair share of conflict or ‘interaction’ with those who had been there ‘ab origine’ (from the beginning, if you like).