Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Ireland is my country too

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar  Julien Behal Photography/PA Wire
Tanaiste Leo Varadkar Julien Behal Photography/PA Wire Tanaiste Leo Varadkar Julien Behal Photography/PA Wire

One of the four nations of the United Kingdom; one of the countries in the UK; Ireland and Northern Ireland; the last is worst. But each of these has always struck me less as statement of fact than provocative assertion to be greeted with a groan, and if it seemed even slightly worthwhile, an argument.

Although never until now have I heard anyone propose that Ireland and Northern Ireland are two ‘young and exciting countries’.

This was not a low-level irritant like Kate Hoey, of course not, because she wouldn’t call ‘Ireland’ exciting. You’ll have guessed how it galls me to hear Leo Varadkar prattle about ‘Ireland’ though well I know he is not the only one, and within his rights. Yes yes, you who wait for journalists to slip, I know well that the official name of the state is indeed ‘Ireland’.

But the name ‘of the country’? They can have the state. They have it already. They cannot have ‘the country’. It’s my country too.

The state of Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, part of the country of Ireland, shares the island with...the Irish Republic. But I can whistle. Even some within a year or two of me and possibly even among the older are given to calling the place they live in Northern Ireland and for all I know they call the other part of the island ‘Ireland’. People who are not unionist, perhaps mostly the young, say they are Northern Irish without a glimmer of apparent awareness that this falls right into assimilationist unionist hands.

‘Assimilationist’? What’s that when it’s at home? And this is where your stubborn, disaffected columnist folds, packs it in. Where is the point in jibbing and balking (and hardly anyone under 60 knows either of those words) when the point is blurred to the point of having no point any longer.

It used to be that unionism insisted on nationalists voicing loyalty to NI because unionists knew nationalists felt the opposite of loyalty, verging on loathing. Alongside the insistence that civil servants swear a loyalty oath – and teachers, and lawyers - ran a fervent unionist, indeed Protestant conviction that nationalists, oh let’s be blunt, Catholics, were intrinsically disloyal to ‘the state’ and if not kept firmly under the cosh would rise in rebellion to overthrow it. They were right, this was true of some. Although after the bloody Twenties and the establishment of the Protestant state almost all nationalist/Catholic disaffection went effectively underground, unspoken except deep inside the Catholic ‘state within a state’. Where the agents of the state and its Protestant majority could not hear it.

Now where are we? We’re living in one of the two exciting young countries that adjoin each other at the border. I find it even harder to believe NI is young and exciting than that it exists as a country at all. But Sister Michael from Derry Girls told the Irish News very recently that this is what she sees on this island. Or rather Siobhán McSweeney, who created the brilliant Sister M out of mere words (all right, plus characterisation and plot) came up with this striking assertion, in an interview to promote a television series that will have begun on screen by the time this appears in print. I would not care to tangle with Sister Michael, and have too much admiration for the actor - for the causes she supports including empathy towards refugees and reproductive rights - to want to contradict her either.

It could also be that that it’s time to row with this one rather than against it. Couldn’t be bad for us to see ourselves as exciting. And if the tide in the affairs of the island is flowing towards unification, could that be between two young countries? Yes, why not. A less exciting thought for another day is how little I know the country that calls itself Ireland.