It is in the unconscious things we say that we give ourselves away - thus the headlines last week about changing the rules to allow "non-nationals" to join An Garda Síochána. But what, please, is a "non-national"?
It is not, so far as I know, in use anywhere else in the English language, save Ireland. Is it another word for foreigner, only we're too polite to say the f-word? Or is it an Irish person who isn't quite foreign, but on the other hand, isn't quite national enough either, as in Peter Robinson?
More to the point, what is a national? Am I a national? I was born in England, but have spent most of my life in Ireland. I have but a single passport, Irish, but anyone who speaks to me will know instantly I did not spend my childhood in Dingle, or Daingean as we are now obliged to say.
So do I qualify for the term "national"? Come to that, was the American-born Eddie Coll a "national" before or after he reinvented himself as Eamon de Valera? And would James Connolly have qualified for the term "national"? He had, after all, only been living in Ireland a few years when he decided he had the right to kill people in Ireland's name - so did that qualify him as a "national"? Sean Mac Stíofáin, a founder of the Provisional IRA, had never been to Ireland before he joined the IRA, and his ancestral link to this country was thoroughly tenuous: a single grandmother, who happened to be unionist. Was he a "national"?
Now there is no formal bar on "non-nationals" joining An Garda Síochána; but the issue is not whether one is a "national", whatever the f-word that is, but whether one speaks Irish, which of course is a mandatory qualification (ha ha ha) for membership of the force. So the Minister for Justice apparently intends to permit foreigners to enter the force, provided they speak either English or Irish in addition to their own native language. And who is being asked to supervise the proposed changes in the law but the caped crusader of the Irish language - yes, Eddie Coll's great-grandson and lookalike, Éamon Ó Cuív himself!
You really don't have to very linguistically sensitive nostrils to detect the familiar stench of first-national-language humbug here. Just how many Urdu- or Ibo- or Bengali-speakers will be able to address the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht and (now Policing) Affairs in Irish? And the rules which Michael McDowell has outlined - with the caped crusader at his shoulder - will mean that anyone whose first language is non-English, but also who speaks English, will be able to join An Garda Síochána without having to pass the Irish qualification.
But applicants whose first language is English will have to learn Irish (or that curious doggerel which passes for Irish in An Teampall Mór Gaeltacht) to qualify for membership of the Irish police force. Why? Well, primarily to keep the caped crusader and all those snarling, fire-breathing gaelgeoir zealots happy.
Yet this is almost certainly illegal, for it discriminates against those whose first language is English. It is probably in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is absolutely in contravention of the spirit, and also probably the letter, of the Belfast Agreement (I would require a Senior Council's opinion on that, Minister, if you would be so good). For it places upon both both Irish and British people of indigenous Anglo-Celtic or Caribbean stock a requirement to leap through a few meaningless linguistic hoops - which is not expected of recruits of Nigerian, Chinese, Japanese or Bangladeshi origin.
Why do we continue with the farcical pretence that we need an Irish-speaking police force to enforce the law through Irish? Is this one of those questions which we simply conveniently ignore, just as we do the issue of what is a "national" and what is not? And is the begging of such questions actually part of the condition which qualifies one for being a "national"?
Moreover, we all know that the Irish language qualification for membership of An Garda Síochána is as rigorous as the Osama bin Laden Flying School's programme for landing airliners. It is a farce and an insult to the language; yet we must presume that we prefer the institutional denigration of Irish, merely that we be seen to be doing something about it, no matter how useless. And maybe this too enables one to be a "national".
We should not contaminate our policing policies with more witless rodomontade about the Irish language. It is right, in itself, that foreigners become members of An Garda Siochana. To impose the gaelgeoir agenda on the selection process is not merely risible and tendentious, but could sooner or later invite a legal challenge from one of our Northern non-national brethren that "Lallans" is not English, and therefore the Irish-speaking requirement does not apply to Ulster folk. Such idiocy is the inevitable result of our cloud cuckoo-land language policies.
Nor is it important, as Michael McDowell professes, that gardaí "reflect" the people they serve. Neither Shrewsbury Road nor Tallaght are policed by gardaí who in accent, class, ambition or attitude reflect the local ethos. Policing has ever been thus, and it is worse than wishful piety to pretend otherwise. It is to declare Sikhs must police Sikhs, and Punjabis Punjabis.
The opposite is the truth: for a garda could be the only man on the street wearing a turban. We respect him none the less.