I rarely go to town so not having access to the city centre does not upset me I was travelling back from the south on Tuesday so I waited until the fuss had died down then arrived back in Lucan without delay.
I watched some of the Queen on RTE and have to say with a sense of pride when she was shown around Croke Park, looked with new eyes at Dublin Castle and the garden of remembrance. Does this visit offer us an opportunity to look again into our past and realise that what we are today, our traditional warmth and welcome for strangers, our care for each other, our pride in our achievements and love of Irishness is partly due to the years we suffered under the rule of the crown.
We as Irish people have a strong link to our history. Somehow or other we can identify with our ancestors, celebrating mass in secret, in famine times starving and dying while England looked on, being evicted from their homes and only means of living by greedy English landlords and being butchered and killed for wanting a better life for themselves and their families. Insofar as we as humans are the total sum of our experiences, does it not then follow that as a nation what we are today is as a result of our relationship with England.
When the Queen walked through the tunnel in Croke Park, a REAL Irish building, with Mary Robinson on one side and Christy Cooney on the other the Irish heart in me said look what we have achieved with little or no help from Britain. The GAA and all it represents is a true monument to what we are as a nation and what we can achieve when people pull together for a common cause. I love my country and I love its people. The Queen will be leaving tomorrow and the debates will be ongoing about the behaviour of the Garda, the behaviour of the protesters but like it or not she will have had an effect on the country, good or bad to be seen but our island will be different because of her visit.
