What are the Irish in New Zealand so sensitive about?

Are we Irish beginning to lose the run of ourselves, do we need to loosen up a little? Who among us will lose sleep ruminating on what Graham Darlow thinks about anything?

This week, the chief executive of Fletcher Construction in New Zealand had to apologise after inferring that Irish contractors were to blame for shoddy foundation work carried out by his company on earthquake-damaged homes in Christchurch. It caused something of a furore among some members of the Irish community abroad.

We seem to have gotten a little uncharacteristically prickly lately about what the outside world thinks of us. Without gushing too much about a diaspora that gave the world some of its greatest engineers and statesmen, and academically armed the warheads of some of the world’s greatest pens, you have to wonder where all the paranoia is coming from.

In fairness to Darlow, he didn’t directly blame the Irish; he just mentioned that some of the original ground workers may have returned to Ireland, neglecting deliberately or otherwise to mention the nationalities of the other absentees.

That was stupid and patently unfair, and he has apologised, leaving us all in something of a lather about national stereotypes. It’s almost as if we aren’t used to this kind of thing, as though we have never been famously able to satirise a pointless slur and laugh it off. Or have we abruptly ceased to be the world’s masters of self-effacing humour?

But that’s just another stereotype, and like our supposed penchant for gambling, drinking, luck and fecklessness, we didn’t come up with it.

Now let’s indulge ourselves in a little more self-aggrandising frippery, perhaps to meditate on the equally stereotypical fact that we are the race that built New York, laid the highways of America and England before clearing and rebuilding its bomb sites and then making pretty decent fist of Sydney Harbour.

The problems caused by the “jack and pack” method of underpinning of foundations in the Christchurch houses have apparently been relatively simple to put right. What we have, in truth, amounts to a good old fashioned contractors’ row, which has so far led to ten official complaints to the Human Rights Commission.

Just don’t do that again Darlow, it’s irritating.

Can we move on now please?