Paradise is not lost; we just need to open our eyes

DESPITE all the stuff we hear about the laughing Irish, the upbeat Irish, the positive Irish, it never ceases to amaze me how little appreciation we really have in this country for ourselves, for our own, for what we have.

We waste so much energy down on ourselves, on those who represent us, on what we have to offer the world. Economically, we’ve never had it so good, yet to listen to all the doom and gloom merchants, you’d swear we were still in dark depression; on the sporting front, our soccer team sits atop its World Cup group, two of our provincial rugby teams are in the quarter-finals of the European Cup, our international team has played themselves to the cusp of a Grand Slam, and yet we’re almost paralysed by the fear factor, a nation waiting for the inevitable crash.

Why? We had three golfers on the European Ryder Cup team that walloped the Americans last year, have hopes of a fourth when the event comes to Ireland next year, yet do we expect to have an Irish major winner any time soon? Do we heck.