Twenty years ago I came to Ireland to write a book. I chose Ireland because I was in harmony with a feeling well expressed by Eamon de Valera: "Irish genius has always valued spiritual and intellectual qualities more than material ones." It was true until recently.
Before the recent visit of the US President, the Taoiseach asked the Irish people to give him a warm welcome because there was a lot of business and investment in the balance. Poor de Valera must be turning in his grave. The French writer André Malraux used to say, "We recognise the value of a man by his capacity to say 'No'." Mr Zapatero, the recently elected Spanish Prime Minister, by saying "No" to the unjust and illegal war in Iraq, must be a man. Robin Cook must also be a man. But not Mr Ahern.
So that is one reason why I have decided to leave Ireland. The other is that much of the freedom I used to enjoy here has gone with the new regulations on smoking and drinking. I don't think it is the State's duty to say whether or not I am allowed to have a meal with my 17-year-old son in a pub after 9 p.m. I don't think it is the State's role to say whether or not I am allowed to enjoy a cigarette after a meal.
In the US, of course, you are not allowed to drink alcohol under the age of 21, but at 17 you are allowed to kill and be killed in Iraq. I know that this Government wants to please the US and to copy their way of life. I can assure them they are on the way - but without me. I didn't come to Ireland to undergo the American way of life.
Seven years ago I opened a little B&B in my house in Donegal - just to survive (not to make money). Through my own work, and with the help of many journalists, I brought a few thousand visitors into this country. I received praise in 269 articles in publications including the Sunday Times, The Irish Times, Le Monde, Harpers and Queen, and many others from Sweden to Australia and from Canada to Hungary.
I am 64 years old and I still feel young enough to start again in a country where my visitors can appreciate the basic law of hospitality: to be able to drink, smoke and eat when they want, with whom they want and where the word "freedom" still has a meaning.
I agree completely with the Minister for Health that smoking is not good for your health (as you will be told by the 30 per cent of doctors and the 40 per cent of nurses who smoke). But to highlight the stupidity of just a few situations in the new Ireland: A lorry driver, alone in his cab, is not allowed to smoke, even if travelling in a foreign country. A man who refuses to stop smoking in a pub can be put in jail - where he may smoke. Lawyers are still arguing over whether or not you are allowed to smoke on an Irish ferry when it is travelling in international waters.
Nobody must be seen smoking on television, but what do you see? Murder every 10 minutes, on every channel, on every news bulletin. But that is not the problem. Murder is OK as long as the murderer doesn't smoke.
But absurdities aside, the worst aspect is that by law, a sign is required at every premises stating to whom a complaint about smoking can be made. So the Government asks you by law to denounce your neighbour if you see him smoking in his van. I never ever thought that Big Brother could be Irish.
Of course, it is easier to denounce a smoker than a murderer, a thief, a paedophile. In every country there are people who are happy to denounce their neighbours or their colleagues (normally with an anonymous letter). To the shame of my own country, France, there were quite a few during the second World War.
"No Government should be allowed to treat a minority as we are being treated" wrote Sean Mac Connell in The Irish Times shortly before the smoking ban came into force.
There is a name for a country in the grip of prohibition and denunciation: a police state. As a man from Northern Ireland remarked to me sarcastically, "And we call it 'the Free State!'" Or as Jean Pierre Langellier wrote in Le Monde: "Part of the Irish identity has gone up in smoke."
A recent Editorial in The Irish Times pointed to the fact that 97 per cent of pub customers comply with the ban as evidence of its success. But compliance with a law does not mean you agree with it - and many people are very angry about this particular law.
The writer goes on to say that "smoking contributes significantly to the inequality between rich and poor" (because smoking rates are higher among the poor).But he or she then argues that "the Government must exploit every means open to it including further price increases" (my italics). This will hardly lessen inequality. It is not by fighting the consequences that you will resolve the cause. It is not by banning smoking that you will resolve poverty.
I passed through Dublin Airport recently. Having paid €50 airport tax, I was expecting to have a seat and a roof under which to have a cigarette. But no. I was among the hundreds of visitors seated on their suitcases outside the building, in the wind. If you think that is the best way to welcome visitors, good luck to you! It took a few centuries for the Irish to win independence from Britain. It took a few decades for them to lighten the weight of the Church.
How long will it take them to free themselves from Big Brother? Judging by the outbreak of resistance in counties Galway and Cork, maybe not that long, but I won't be here to see.