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Ireland’s neutrality: What’s so ‘traditional’ about it?

IT Sunday: Fintan O’Toole’s latest column, David McWilliams on the fascinating history of maths, plus our latest advice columns

The combination of the terms 'Irish', 'neutrality' and 'tradition' can be a combustible one. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Sun Jun 25 2023 - 09:00

Welcome to this week’s IT Sunday, a selection of the best Irish Times journalism for our subscribers.

In his column this weekend, Fintan O’Toole is examining Irish neutrality – particularly the language surrounding it. As evidenced by the fallout following President Higgins’s interview in the Business Post last weekend, the combination of the terms “Irish”, “neutrality” and “tradition” can be a combustible one.

Many invoke Ireland’s “traditional neutrality”, writes O’Toole – but what does it really mean? It seems clear but “beneath the surface of this political clarity, there are murky depths of uncertain meaning. If we had a submarine to dive down into those dark fathoms (which we don’t because we don’t have a navy), we would find a head-wrecking theological conundrum: Ireland evokes a tradition of neutrality but it has never practised traditional neutrality.”

O’Toole adds: “What everyone else understands by military neutrality is that a country that adopts it invests heavily in its own defence forces so that it can resist threats without relying on alliances. And that it does not allow any foreign military forces on its national territory. We don’t do the first of these and we do permit the second.”

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David McWilliams is writing about maths; its colourful history, its overwhelming importance and the tragic reality that so many people leave school hating it as a subject. “Maths moves us from superstition to proof, from conjecture to fact, from guesswork to certainty. Humans would simply not have evolved into the creatures we are without maths. And it shouldn’t surprise us that the story of maths, like the story of humans, begins in Africa,” writes McWilliams. Read more.

The latter part of this week was dominated by the news that RTÉ star presenter Ryan Tubridy had received €345,000 in hidden payments between 2017 and the start of this year. That money was never disclosed in annual pay statements that suggested Mr Tubridy, the station’s highest earner, took a bigger pay cut than was actually the case as the broadcaster set out to reduce costs in 2020. On Friday, Oliver Callan filled in to present Radio 1′s Ryan Tubridy show and Ed Power was on hand to review it: “Callan is walking a tightrope. He’s fronting the Ryan Tubridy Show when Ryan Tubridy’s financial arrangements with the national broadcaster are under public scrutiny. As Callan says, he can’t ignore it. But he understandably does not wish to spend the entire 56-minute broadcast banging on about it,” writes Power. “But maybe he should have banged on about it.”

In Sport, Matt Williams is talking about education – and sport’s valuable role in teaching children how to handle winning and losing. He writes: “Helping our children to learn how to emotionally cope in competitive environments should be high on our educators’ priorities because that is the type of environment where almost all our children will spend their adult lives.

“Being outrun by a faster competitor or standing behind the goalposts after the opposition have scored a try is unpleasant but it should not break a child’s confidence. As the coaching mantra goes, ‘The game itself is the greatest of teachers’. Victory and defeat are realities of the game and both hold great lessons for us.”

In her restaurant review this week, Corinna Hardgrave wrote about Kari – an Indian restaurant in Inchicore, Dublin 8, which our food critic says serves deliciously creative dishes. “Kari is a delightful restaurant with some truly original dishes that are full of bright, vibrant flavours that you are unlikely to find elsewhere. It’s a smart room with a nice sense of community and I can imagine it is as full at lunchtime for the €16.50 thali, as it is when we visit on a sunny Thursday evening.” The verdict is a very positive four stars.

An Irish emigrant’s struggle with deciding whether or not to move back to Ireland forms the subject of Trish Murphy’s newest advice column. The young man in question says his return to Ireland means the world to his mother and the move was all planned out. Recently, however, he starting seeing an Australian woman and, now, she’s pregnant. Caught between whether to stay or go, he asks Murphy for advice: “No matter how I think about it, doing the right thing seems to hurt someone badly,” he writes.

In her latest column, Roe McDermott responds to a reader who has fallen into a casual relationship with a man, whom she knows she will never properly be with. “How do I get over him, without contacting him and without saying anything that will make him see me as immature?” Roe’s advice is direct: “Walk away from this man.”

As always, there is much more on irishtimes.com, including rundowns of all the latest movies in our film reviews, tips for the best restaurants in our food section and all the latest in sport. There are plenty more articles exclusively available for Irish Times subscribers here.

In this week’s On the Money newsletter, Conor Pope wrote about travel insurance and whether or not you really need it for your holiday abroad. Sign up here to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox every Friday.

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