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So, What’s the Craic?

The Craic is back on this lovely Friday, bringing you all the craic we could find about the Irish at home and abroad. If you like this weekly newsletter, pass it on to friends and family by asking them to sign up here.

News from Home

Welcome Everywhere. New rankings have been released for the world’s most powerful passports, and can you guess who’s number one? Yep. The Irish passport – An Pas Éireannach – is top of the pile. The rankings are based on numerous factors, including ease of travel, personal freedoms, ability to obtain dual nationality, and global perception. We like the last factor, in particular, as it tells us that the rest of the world thinks the Irish are a great bunch of lads, and we are.

Pint of Black & White. A man, his zebra, and a Shetland pony walk into a bar…Sounds like the start of an old joke, but it really happened this week in a bar in Co. Clare. Now, the photos of the man having a pint with his striped friend went viral, and many had a good laugh, but we can tell you that animal rights campaigners are really pissed off about it, with some calling for legal action against the man (presumably not the zebra). What the feck is a zebra doing in Clare anyway?

Leave Molly mAlone. A statue depicting one of Ireland’s most famous fictional characters – Molly Malone – has stood (at various locations) in Dublin since 1988. The problem is, she’s under attack. A tourist trend of rubbing the, ahem, ‘chest area’ of Ms. Malone for luck has caused serious wear and tear on the statue. Dublin City Council is taking steps to discourage the practice by employing stewards to patrol the area.

Bad Accents. We’ve seen some terrible attempts from American and British actors attempting Irish accents in movies down the years – Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts among the worst offenders – but what if an Irishman does a bad imitation of an Irish accent? That’s the charge laid at Pierce Brosnan in his new show MobLand. We are huge fans of Co. Louth’s finest Silver Fox (how can you look that good at 71?), so we’ll let him away with it.

The Irish Influence

The GAA season proper is about to get underway at the weekend with the commencement of the All-Ireland Football and Hurling Championships. It’ll mark several months of ferocious action as we make our way to the All-Ireland Finals in the summer. The season does start on a sad note, though, with the passing of legendary football player and coach Mick O’Dwyer. “Micko” was a kind of Vince Lombardi figure in the GAA, winning several All-Ireland titles as a player and many more as manager of the legendary Kerry team of the 1970s and 1980s. He was arguably the greatest coach in the game’s history. Rest in Peace, Micko.

Cúpla Focal

Grá, Dóchas, Cairdeas {Graw, Doh-khuss, Kar-dyass} – Love, Hope, Friendship. It might be the sort of saying that you find embossed on a cheap mug from a Donegal giftshop, but with all this shittiness going on in the world right now, we could all do with a bit more Grá, Dóchas, and Cairdeas, right?

Blast from the Past

We have touched on occasion in this newsletter that Ireland has sometimes been a bit slow to get with the times. We have been laggards in areas like reproductive health, divorce, and LGBTQ rights. As to the latter, April 5th, 2011, saw the first-ever civil partnership between a gay couple in Irish history. When Barry Dignam and Hugh Walsh had gotten together 20 years previously, homosexuality was still illegal across the country, so the sight of them tying the knot was hailed as a historic moment. While we’ve often lagged behind, we soon caught up: in 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to pass a constitutional referendum to allow legal same-sex marriage. It should be viewed as one our proudest moments.

And One Last Thing….

We started this newsletter talking about passports and travel, so let’s finish on the same topic. Alarm bells are ringing across the Irish tourist sector due to plunging numbers of international arrivals – February, for instance, saw a 30% YoY decline. Some models suggest that 2025 could be as dire as 2021 – at the height of the pandemic – for tourist numbers. There are many reasons being cited for the decline, not least the cost of travel. But some have espoused a simple theory – Ireland is going out of fashion for travelers. They claim the boom years – turbo-charged by interest in locations used in Star Wars and Game Thrones – are behind us. We aren’t fans of the defeatist attitude. We’ve yet to meet anyone who has regretted a trip to Ireland, and we bet you haven’t either. We are sure the island’s tourist sector will bounce back.

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