You want to be Irish? Are you right there, Mikhail...

Sunday Tribune, 4 July

Everybody loves the Irish. The Yanks love us so much they're going to snap up the government's new Certificates of Irishness when they're back from the printers.
The Israelis love us so much they're stealing our passports to murder terrorists in other countries.
Our latest admirers are the Russians. They think we're so cool they used Irish passports to set up an inept spy ring in the US. Everybody wants to be Irish these days.
With this in mind, I'd like to give you a preview of my new tome, The Little Buke of Ireland (or How to be Irish). It's to help foreigners become like us, so they can blend in when they're spying, murdering or just gawking at the Cliffs of Moher.
Firstly, to be Irish you must…

1) Refuse to accept the bleeding obvious. Recession? What recession? Brian Lenihan announced it was over, last week. This was on the same day we recorded our highest ever unemployment figures. While cynics sneered, no one pointed out those figures are wrong. Unemployment is bound to be higher than 450,000. What about those who don't get the dole? The self-employed? Or those who have been unemployed for over a year and don't qualify any more?
Maybe the recession's over for you, Brian. For the rest of us it's (lack of) business as usual.
2) Have a stupid piece of advice for all occasions. Bill Cullen should set up a factory to manufacture old rope. He's been making a fortune out of selling it for years. His latest advice to the unemployed is to work for nothing. Business legend Ben Dunne doesn't agree.
"Bull! Absolute bull! It's an insult to ask somebody to work for nothing," he told Hot Press. He's right. Even Bill was paid a penny for selling apples back in prehistory.
Maybe they should become partners in the Old Rope Factory. 'Bill and Ben' has worked before you know.
3) Be a knocker. A builder in Navan has been ordered to knock down his home as it was built without planning permission. Despite the obvious turmoil involved, it's hard to feel too sorry for him. The house is a palatial "FU" to the planning process.
Building non-compliant houses and then asking for retention was one of the slimier aspects of the boom. Hopefully this ruling will lead to more demolitions. This could finally give a positive spin to the phrase 'a nation of knockers'.
4) Be a world-beater. To be Irish you have to succeed despite the begrudgers or fail on a spectacular level. Champage corks popped at Anglo last week as it entered the Guinness Book of Records as Worst Bank in the World. Maybe Ireland should aspire to be Worst Country Ever. It could be a good marketing hook. 'You've tried the best, now try the rest. Ireland: world-leader at being crap.' I like it.
5) Take 'T' to China. 'Mr T', that is. One of the best business decisions of the past month was made by Wei Quoinhas. He's exporting Mr Tayto's crisps to 1,200 outlets in Shanghai. It's the start of the process of softening up the Chinese. Get them hooked on Tayto and they might buy into Brian Cowen's plan to make the midlands a hub for Chinese industry.
We could take it one stage further. Why not sell the whole country to China? Ireland could then become the 'Hong Kong' of the west.
Just think how much that would annoy the Brits.
6) Squeeze everything you can out of the system. Despite having the second-worst Dáil attendance record in 2009, Bertie Ahern still cost us €114,000 in secretarial fees. The Irish Times last week reported that, as a former taoiseach, he's entitled to a free secretary for life. Angry about that? I am.
Take a memo, Bertie: you're a waste of space.
7) Overvalue everything. We did it with houses and now the country's lawyers are continuing the tradition with their wages. On Wednesday, Taxing Master Charles Moran expressed his "disgust" at the costs sought by some of the country's top wigs.
He reduced a €2.143m legal bill to €393,472 and described the costs as "revolting". Isn't it time we started revolting against this privileged class of moneygrubbers?
8) Sell something that's free. Clare County Council is to sell views of the Cliffs of Moher for €6 a pop. They've been free to look at for millennia and now, because an unwanted interpretive centre is losing money, the cliffs are pay-per-view. What next? A fee to look at the sky on sunny days? 'Sky pay-per-view'. Hasn't that been done before? Why must we always treat tourists like saps?
9) Get your priorities straight. This final module in our guide sums up everything you need to know about being Irish. According to the latest figures, last year we spent €2.3bn on cigs (up 3%) and €6.5bn on booze. Despite cutbacks we spent €8.6bn partying. Compare that to what we spent on food: €7.5bn. The ultimate Irish answer to hardship is to say, "Sod dinner, I'm off to the pub."
So there you have it, Mikhail. If you want to become an Irish 'Mick', get the pints in. And when the barman shouts "Have you no home to go to?" just wink and say, "Not any more."

dkenny@tribune.ie