Glossary: I

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The Irish Financial Services Centre. A large office complex near Dublin's Custom House occupied by big-ass legal firms, financial houses, and other distasteful operations. The Celtic Tiger's dark and beating heart.

Indo, the

The Irish Independent newspaper. Originally a strongly pro-Fine Gael publication (and still often referred to by staunch Fianna Fáilers as "that Blueshirt rag"), The Indo is the flagship newspaper of the Independent Media Group which owns most of the newspapers in Ireland, run by "rugger bugger di tutti rugger buggers" and homegrown man-who-would-be-Murdoch, Sir Anthony O'Reilly. Like the media products of our pal Rupert, The Indo-- especially its Sunday incarnation-- is a sleazy mixture of celebrity gossip and titillation, backed up by the ravings of bores so barking mad that not even The Irish Times would have them, and liberally larded with obseqious references to the discerning lifestyle of Sir Tony and his brood of Celtic Tiger whelps.

I have never been bothered actually finding out where The Indo's Web site is located.

Irish Americans

The descendants of those Irish who left the country during the many wars and famines and settled in the US, the Irish Americans tend to have rather quaint and charming notions about their native (sic) land that offer no end of amusement to the inhabitants of Ireland. To an Irish American, Ireland is some mist-shrouded isle of song and story, where hearty old men gather in whitewashed cabins to play cards, drink whisky, and recite a saga or two, popping out occasionally to post a letter to America and bust a cap in a redcoat on the way back. The mere knowledge that people in a faraway land believe this nonsense is of great merriment to the Irish, but Irish Americans are kind enough to actually visit the country, spending great quantities of money to come here so that we can mock them in person!

Irish language

Instrument of torture, employeed in Irish schools but banned in more civilised areas of the world.

Okay, okay. Irish, also known as Gaelic or Erse, is an inflecting Indo-European language belonging to the q-Celtic family of languages that includes Scots Gaelic and Manx. It is distantly related to the p-Celtic languages: Welsh and Breton. Like the other Celtic languages, Irish has seen better days. During Ireland's time as a British colony, the language was under constant attack so that, by the time of the War of Independence, it was in grave danger of dying out altogether. In one of those moves that leaves you wondering about the veracity of Irish jokes, the Irish government set about revivifying the language with such terrifying zeal and pig-ignorant bloody-mindedness that a large segment of the present population of Ireland now actively loathes the language (as opposed to their forefathers who were merely apathetic towards it). It is a sad reflection on the Irish education system that it can teach people Irish for fourteen years without producing any competence in it.

Nvertheless, the Irish language occupies a peculiar blind-spot in the minds of most Irish and foreigners are strongly discouraged from even mentioning the subject. The usual response to an inquiry about the Irish language will result in an hour-long dribbling rant about the various insane and psychotic Irish teachers the Irish person endured in school, interspersed with affirmations of eternal emnity towards the poor language. Despite all this, the average Irish person will defend to his last breath the right to speak Irish badly, which is a victory of a sort, I guess.

An Irish Solution To An Irish Problem

Expression coined by politican Charles J. Haughey. When criticized for the compromises in his bill that finally legalised contraception in Ireland (basically, it made contraception available only to married couples for "bona fide" family planning purposes), Haughey replied that the bill was "an Irish solution to an Irish problem". In other words, sure, this legislation steers a tortuous path, but it does so to avoid colliding with the sacred cows of Irish society (in this case, the Roman Catholic Church and its ban on contraception).

Haughey's enemies appropriated the phrase (see also comely maidens) and have used it since to denigrate any law or agreement they feel smacks too much of compromise or gombeenism. People like this would be much happier, of course, if we consistently adopted British Solutions To Irish Problems, or European Solutions To Irish Problems.

Irish Times, the

Daily newspaper. During the years of the British occupation, it was the newspaper of "the Quality" with a strong Protestant, Unionist ethos. Post-independence, it has switched its loyalties to the spiritual descendents of the old Ascendancy. Its editorial content oscillates between excruciating right-on-ness and atavistic West Brit sensibilities. Unusually, the paper is not owned by the ubiquitous Independent Group; instead, it's independently held by a weird trust fund whose incessant infighting provides Dublin's Private Eye- equivalent, The Phoenix with near-continuous supply of copy. The paper also sports what must be the finest collection of self-important Irish bores ever gathered under one roof, whose constant tubthumping and internecine bickering often provides the chattering classes with weeks of amusement.

The sad thing is, The Irish Times, stuffy and idiosyncratic as it is, is probably the best paper in Ireland.

The Irish Times operate a Web portal-type thing grandiosely entitled ireland.com. Check it out if you must.

Island of Saints and Scholars

Romantic name for Ireland, based on the somewhat erroneous notion that, while the rest of Europe was burning and pillaging its way through the Dark Ages, the `light of learning' was kept alive in the abbeys and monasteries of Ireland. Use of the phrase in a non-ironic fashion will immediately mark you out as a mental defective and a gobshite of the highest calibre.