One of our own is visiting today.
We are a small island beside a powerful, predatory neighbour.
So, it was probably inevitable that if we were to survive as a people, we would become a diaspora nation.
I declare a personal interest in Mark Carney visiting Aughagower in the County Mayo.
My father and his parents are buried in the graveyard there.
That little corner will always be special for me.
A place of tears and a place of pride and thankfulness.
There is close to zero chance that Mark Carney’s people didn’t know my people.
The government recently published the 1926 census, the first conducted by the newly created Irish Free State.
There was my father, a two-year-old, in a household headed by his uncle, Michael Derrig, an ex-Frongoch internee.
Michael’s mother, Catherine, a widow, and his sister, Julia, and her husband, Joe, my grandfather, were all under the same roof.
Mark Carney’s grandparents, Robert Carney and Nora Moran, had left the country for Canada the year before the 1926 census was completed.
They embarked on the steamship Montnairn in July 1925.
It was an emigration tradition firmly established after An Gorta Mór.
Our greatest export became our people.
In the 1841 census, the population of this island was recorded as 8,175,124.
The last available census data is from 2021.
That put the figure for the 26-County area at 5,010,000 and the failed political entity in the northeast of the island at 1,903,175.
A total of 6, 913,175.
That’s 1,261,949 below the 1841 figure.
Had the population of Ireland grown at the same rate as Britain today, our island would be home to between 27 and 36 million.
Dear reader, you will search hard and long for another country in Europe with a smaller population today than it had in the middle of the 19th century.
Carney himself, a grandson of Mayo, has proved that he comes from substantial people.
He was the top fella at the Bank of England from 2008 to 2013.
At the time of the Brexit vote, he warned of the consequences of leaving.
Thankfully, the Brits paid no attention to him!
That slow-moving Suez crisis is about to have its birthday soon.
During those divorce proceedings, the Irish officials at the EU Commission played a blinder, getting ahead of the game.
This is required reading on the subject from a journalist at the top of his game.
Unlike those fraught negotiations in late 1921, the Irish were no longer contending with a world power.
In the Brexit talks, our gallant allies in Europe prevailed and have created the economic conditions for an all-island economy.
As these words blink to life in Dún na nGall, the Big Fella has confirmed that Baby Doctor is airborne.
She’s coming home to her island and this time for keeps.
Being a country GP in Mayo will suit her.
Like Mark Carney, she won’t be short of cousins there!
The blood is strong.
Australia was lucky to have her.
We Irish are a perfect example of soft power.
Our cultural footprint in the global village is hugely disproportionate to our size.
Yet this place will always be home, regardless of where we first see the light of day.
It is one of the many things that our predatory neighbours don’t know about us.
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Please keep Mark Carney there, he is destroying Canada
Mark Carney stood up for the economic strength of an independent Scotland.
Mhairi ‘plastic Irish’ Black has left the SNP, but still not apologised for her racist comment.
Carney stood up for his own bank account.
For many of us scattered across the world,our home will, always be the island of Ireland ,for me the town of Rathmelton in wonderful Donegal ,
Summers playing in the river ,helping to,lift the potatoes for part of lunch ,my grandmother’s just baked soda bread from the peat stove ,the peat cut from my uncle Pats farm in Creeslough , and helping out at Whoriskeys shop for a free ice cream, memories that will never fade
Spent many happy hours in the village of Aughagower. The Noonan family were most welcoming, indeed they all visited my parents home in Uibh Fhaili over the years. As the old saying goes, You’ll never beat the Irish.