There was a man in the Letters section of the Irish Times who was complaining. Complaining gently, because that’s how things are done in the ?Irish Times. He was referring to an article by Fintan O’Toole, in which O’Toole had referred to “our island”. No, Veronica, not a Paradise Island where Fintan was squirreling away his loot. It was our own dear island of Ireland. And the man, by the name of O’Regan, didn’t like that. It wasn’t our island. Because of the Good Friday Agreement, we live on a “shared island”. We share it, he says, with the UK. That’s like saying little Johnny shared his lunch with a large schoolmate, who leaned over him and advised him strongly to make with the lunch.
That got me thinking. If the people of Ireland can’t call the island they live on theirs, because the UK has insisted on a spot of northern jurisdiction, what would Mr O’Regan call those of us living north of the Black Sow’s Dyke – share-croppies? Nearly-Irish- but-no-cigar? Awkward truthers?
Mr O’Regan is from Blackrock, Co Dublin, which is about as far from the north of our island as you can get. Which makes his letter look like another effort by comfortable southern citizenry to hold at arm’s-length the irritating, infuriating, alarming nordies who keep on insisting that they are – of all things – Irish, and live in – of all places – Ireland.
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