Now we’ve abandoned our own
Being the son of Irish emigrants to England I had always worn my Irishness with pride. The idea that two Irish parents make an Irish child seemed a safe conclusion to me until it met with resistance from a source I had not expected. My mother began to explain to me that because I was born in the UK I was, in fact, English. I thought her nerves were at her.
Although English people had no problem seeing me as Irish, when I returned to Ireland in my 20s my cousins and neighbours were not so convinced. Perhaps English fairies had switched me in the cot with an English baby.
I had always thought it was the job of unionist politicians to persuade Irish people that they were British. However, I found no end of support for the idea the length and breadth of Ireland.
Here in the Free State people preferred that I describe myself as something other than Irish.
I was not alone in my abandonment as some Free Staters held the strange belief that Monaghan was bordered on its northern side by a coastal region beyond which Belfast could be found somewhere away in Britain.
Under the weight of this rejection this English-speaking son of Irish parents struggled to find the difference between himself and the English-speaking sons of Irish parents born here.
Apart from an accent - I am not trying to claim I am a local - the most significant cultural experience I found I had been lacking was Wanderly Wagon.
I thanked God for the republican architects of our constitution as the state issued my Irish passport and I took comfort from our Taoiseach’s words to George Bush that there are 70 million of us Irish - we’re just not in the same place at the same time.
I was consoled that 80% of Irish people in the Republic have now seen the error of their ways and now concede that it’s not where you are born that makes you Irish as the amendment will make clear.
Myself and, I’m sure, the 66,500,000 emigrants and emigrants’ children, as well as the residents of six Ulster counties, are reassured that the 3,500,000 of you in the Free State have finally come to your senses. We hope that we now have a chance to rebuild this nation together.
It’s a broken people that tear themselves to pieces; a confident people seize their advantage. If you can’t make alliances with your own cousins, the emigrants, how are you going to come to terms with unionists, Travellers and the English who really are English, let alone people from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Philippines?
Up to 200,000 of us have made the decision to reunite our identity with our land by returning to the Republic after being born in the UK.
In an ideal world we would never have found ourselves over there, but that’s history now. I hope that, in future, newspapers and researchers will stop identifying us as UK and find some title which reflects the fact that we are Irish.
Am I a local? No. Am I Irish? Yes. Am I a Free Stater? No thanks!
David O’Reilly
28, Cois Coillte
Clarinbridge
Co Galway
