WHEN Irish eyes are smiling, they’re usually up to something.
It’s junket season once again, and every tractor and fire engine in County Limerick is being polished down to the chassis to knock the auld socks off the fine folks staying here at home on Shannonside for St Patrick’s Day.
It’s true what they say, you can take the man out of Ireland, but never the Irish from the man. And while we get drowned watching lorries donned in bunting file down O’Connell Street like something out of a Roald Dahl novel — a convoy of Limerick councillors will be off living the high life in Amerikay.
We’ll have to make do with supermarket plonk and the obligatory bacon and cabbage, maybe even some Romantica if we’re good, while the lads and lassies from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are off shamrocking over in New York, Rockaway Beach, and Savannah, Georgia.
But look, as the man said, ‘What butter and whiskey won’t cure, there is no cure for.’
Let them off on their jollies, haven’t we multinational companies and sporting events to be courteously courting abroad?
And don’t they work hard enough for it with all their fussing and fighting with new Mayor John Moran, Active Travel, the National Transport Authority, Uisce Éireann, the Land Development Agency, and, yes indeed, each other, at every opportunity.
But who will look after the homestead? All those patriotic wee backsides won’t paint themselves green, white, and orange Someone is going to have to take charge and make sure that the jocularity on our main thoroughfares lives up to the high-falutin’ jiggery pokery we’ve become accustomed to down the years.
I’m as patriotic as the next fella, and all for being pelted sideways by lashing rain as a cavalcade of articulated trucks motor past. It’s what our forefathers would have wanted.
While our brightest local politicians are off dazzling the big shots across the pond with all the sca from Merchants Quay, who, will you tell me, is going to make sure that there will be savage craic for the rest of us?
Well, Limerick’s first ever directly-elected Mayor John Moran is surely the man to put the razzmatazz back into our national holiday.
I have to admit, I was surprised that he wasn’t first choice to be grand marshal for this year’s St Patrick’s Day Parade – given his historic appointment last year. He’s definitely shown his passion and drive and ambition for Limerick in recent months, so, like the good serfs we are, should we not be out lining the streets in his honour?
Maybe he’s off Stateside with the rest of them, but, do you know what, he’s more than proved that he’s the right man for the big job and that Limerick comes first. We’ll still raise a glass to him on our little island’s big day to say “you’re only doing mighty things altogether”.
Cows from across the sea might have long horns, but we’re at the start of a very exciting journey here in Limerick and may the road rise with us and our new Mayor to meet it.
St Patrick’s Day 2025, it would seem to me, is as good a time as any to celebrate this inspirational juncture in Limerick’s good fortunes.
May you have the hindsight, Mayor, to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.
Sláinte!
