The vigil that has lasted for 1,500 years

By Dr Ian Clarke 

Monday, March 17, was St Patrick’s Day, the Irish National Day that is celebrated by Irish people all over the world. 

There are estimated to be 70 to 80 million people of Irish descent globally, including more than 15 American presidents, so the Irish are far more numerous outside Ireland. 

Since there are so many Irish Americans, it is traditional for the Irish Prime Minister to travel to the US on St Patrick’s Day to meet the American President. 

This year the Prime Minister (or Taoiseach, pronounced Teeshok) Michael Martin (pronounced Mehall), made the pilgrimage with some trepidation since President Donald Trump is in the process of slapping tariffs on random countries. 

Ireland has been so successful in attracting large American companies to the Emerald Isle that it is now making a substantial surplus in its budget through the corporation tax being paid by these American companies. 

Therefore, if Trump puts a tax on their products, they could decide to relocate back to America. 

The meeting went reasonably well, with Trump having kind words for Ireland, but taking aim at the European Union (EU). The only problem is that Ireland is a member of the EU, so any tariffs applied to the EU will also apply to Ireland. 

Ireland has benefited hugely from its membership of the EU, getting EU aid to modernise its infrastructure and, being an English-speaking country within the EU, it has attracted American Big Tech, Pharma and medical equipment companies positioning themselves to tap into the European market. 

The entire island of Ireland has a population of only seven million people, with 5.2 million in the Republic and 1.8 million in Northern Ireland, because Ireland is one island under two jurisdictions. 

Northern Ireland, with six counties, is under the UK, while the other 26 counties make up the Republic. 

This split traces its origins to 400 years ago when Ireland was Catholic, but Britain was Protestant and wanted people in Ireland who were loyal to the crown, so they established the ‘Ulster Plantation’ in which Protestants from Scotland were settled in the northern province of Ulster, displacing the powerful Catholic families of the O’Neill’s and the O’Donnell’s. 

The divide between Catholic Republicans and Loyalist Protestants has continued to this day and been the cause of a civil war after independence in 1922 and the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland from the 1970s until the signing of the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998. 

Dr Ian Clarke

Since St Patrick’s Day celebrates the date of his death, Ronald Reagan made the joke that the Irish were the only people who could keep a wake (vigil) going for 1,500 years, (St Patrick died in 461). 

It is true that the Irish are famous for their celebration of wakes. A wake is a time to celebrate and toast the life of the departed and give him a good send-off, traditionally with ‘Poteen’, a distilled liquor also known as moonshine. 

There are similarities between the histories of Ireland and Uganda. Ireland was also under the British, and, apart from Belfast, it was hardly industrialised. 

The result was that at independence in 1922, it had a weak rural economy, like many African countries. It also descended into civil war after independence, and post-civil war, it was ruled by an extremely conservative president who did not want Ireland to adopt any ‘modern’ liberal values which were sweeping through Britain at that time. 

Therefore, Irish society stayed conservative, rural, religious and backward, dominated by the Catholic hierarchy, who were even more powerful than Parliament, resulting in 50 years of slow economic growth. Under new leadership, Ireland emerged into a period of rapid growth in the nineties and early 2000s until its economy imploded in the 2008 financial collapse when it joined the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) as a highly indebted country.

However, it then reshaped its economy, based on low corporate taxes; attracting foreign investment; developing a well-educated workforce, and having a stable national economy and appropriate budget policies. 

The result is that it is now among the European countries with the highest per capital income, although due to its rapid economic growth, it is struggling with an acute housing shortage and gaps in the health service (which is largely nationalised). 

The other similarity between the Irish and Ugandans is that they are people-orientated, more than task-bound – which is why both are often late for meetings! We all know about Ugandan time and mzungu time, but there is also Irish time, which is flexible like Ugandan time.