Glossary: P

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Pay As You Earn. Most Irish people who are not self-employed are in the PAYE net, which means that the tax on their incomes, along with their social insurance contributions, are deducted at source. Thus, they are easy, pliant marks for the Revenue.

Plastered

see drunk.

Points system

Feature of the Irish education system that foreigners are best knowing very little (preferably nothing) about. However, we offer the following explanation for the very brave or the very stupid:

For many years in Ireland, the sluggish economy made finding a job very difficult. For the few jobs there were, employers raised the qualifications required in order to winnow the horde of hopeful applicants down to a sensible number. This continued until you needed a PhD to muck out the toilets in a brothel. The only choice was to stay in the education system until you got tired and emigrated (thus absolving the government from having to do anything about the situation) or until you found a company to fund your doctoral research in Brothel Sanitary System Hygiene Management. Pretty soon, the number of available University places was exceeded by the number of people leaving the secondary school system. Whereas before a potential University student applied to the institution where they were interested in studying, a Central Admissions Office was set up to torment students with incomprehensible application forms. A student's results in the Leaving Certificate examination were converted into points. Each course offered by each third-level institution was assigned a points score based on demand for that course. If the student failed to obtain that number of points, they were ineligible for the course.

Competition is high. A kind of industry has grown up around this so-called `points race' where windbag reporters with dubious qualifications try to increase the circulation of their newspapers by writing panic-mongering series of articles implying that failure to secure a place in a third-level course can only result in a spiral into penury, substance abuse, and slow suicide. Thus, many visitors to Ireland at the start of the year may be somewhat bemused to see the usual front-page newspaper stories of corruption, atrocity, and mass-murder relegated to the back pages while self-appointed experts discuss the future of the current group of Leaving Cert students in hushed tones guaranteed to generate the most fear.

From the above, it should be obvious to everyone planning to visit Ireland that it is a very bad mistake to engage an Irish person in any discussion of the Irish education system.

Politics

A very bad topic of conversation in a pub.

Poteen

Properly poitín: Irish moonshine. Usually made from grain or potatoes, poitín is essentially whisky that's not aged before it's drunk. Illegal in its country of origin, emasculated versions are often offered for sale to tourists in Irish airports. Like most illicit spirits, poitín can vary wildly in quality, ranging from stuff that rivals commercial whiskys in flavour and drinkability to paint stripper that will induce the worst sort of I-want-to-die hangover in even the sturdiest souls. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. Proceed with caution.

Progressive Democrats

The PDs are the newest political party in Ireland and the smallest, formed during in the eighties when a bunch of politicians left Fianna Fáil when the stench of corruption there got just a tad too strong. As a result, the PDs claim to occupy the high moral ground in Irish politics, despite their enthusiasm for leaping into bed with their former party-mates on the slightest provocation to form coalition governments. The truth is they hold the moral high ground simply because they are too small and insignificant to be worth bribing.

Their name is somewhat misleading; they are neither very progressive nor democratic. Instead, they peddle a wishy-washy form of right-wing Thatcherism to young Celtic Tiger cubs and other self-obsessed lowlifes.