First drafted during the Covid lockdowns of 2021 but left unpublished, this article remains as relevant today as it was then. The Brexit passport debate exposed a lingering tendency among sections of Ireland's intellectual establishment to question diaspora identity even while claiming to celebrate it. Ultimately, the debate was never really about passports. It was about who gets to define Irishness.

This article is based upon a draft originally written in 2021 during the Covid lockdowns. Like many projects begun during that strange period of uncertainty, it was pushed aside and never completed. Returning to it several years later, I am struck not by how much has changed, but by how much has stayed the same. Brexit may no longer dominate the headlines, but the attitudes exposed by that debate continue to shape discussions about identity, citizenship and belonging. The questions remain remarkably familiar. Who gets to define Irishness? Who gets to decide who belongs? And why do some commentators continue to assume that they possess the authority to answer those questions for everyone else?

For all his considerable talents as a writer, commentator and public intellectual, Fintan O'Toole revealed a great deal about the assumptions underpinning modern Irish establishment thinking when he described many post-Brexit applicants for Irish citizenship as embracing Ireland as a "flag of convenience." In his The Irish Times article welcoming what he called a "new tribe" of Anglo-Irish people, O'Toole argued that practical considerations, particularly the desire to retain European Union rights and freedoms after Brexit, lay behind the surge in Irish passport applications from Britain, before suggesting that this process might ultimately encourage people to rediscover and deepen their connection to Irish identity. On the surface, it appeared a generous argument. Unlike some critics, O'Toole was prepared to welcome these new citizens into the Irish family. Yet embedded within that apparent generosity was an unmistakable note of condescension. The welcome came only after the motives had been inspected. The belonging came only after the explanation. The recognition came only after the interpretation. Rather than beginning from the assumption that these individuals possessed a legitimate claim to Irish identity through family, history and inheritance, O'Toole first felt compelled to explain their behaviour to them. In doing so, he produced a perfect example of damning with faint praise.

The problem with O'Toole's argument is not simply that it gets Brexit wrong. It gets the diaspora wrong. It begins from an assumption that is fundamentally detached from the lived experience of millions of people. Implicit in the argument is the notion that Brexit somehow awakened a dormant Irishness among large numbers of people in Britain. The image presented is one of opportunistic passport applicants suddenly dusting off forgotten family trees, discovering an Irish grandparent and deciding that European citizenship might prove useful after all. No doubt some individuals fit that description, just as there are people in every walk of life whose decisions are driven primarily by practical considerations. But reducing a phenomenon involving hundreds of thousands of people to a story of convenience demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of how Irish identity survives across generations. Brexit did not create Irishness. It did not persuade people that they possessed Irish ancestry. It did not plant emotional, cultural or familial ties where none previously existed. The passport applications that followed Brexit were not the beginning of a relationship with Ireland. They were merely the legal acknowledgement of a relationship that had already endured for decades and, in many cases, generations. The passport followed the identity. The identity did not follow the passport.

What makes O'Toole's analysis particularly revealing is that it reflects a worldview that has become dominant within significant sections of Ireland's media, academic and cultural establishment. This worldview regards itself as cosmopolitan, educated and outward-looking. It prides itself on having escaped the insularity of an earlier Ireland. Yet it frequently struggles to comprehend an obvious reality: Irishness has never been confined to the island itself. Instead, it tends to imagine Ireland as the centre of gravity and the diaspora as a collection of peripheral communities orbiting around it. Irish identity originates at home and radiates outward. Ireland defines itself and the diaspora responds. Ireland evolves and the diaspora catches up. Ireland determines what Irishness means and the descendants of emigrants are expected to adjust their understanding accordingly. Seen through this lens, the diaspora is rarely treated as an equal partner in the Irish story. Instead, it becomes an object of analysis, a phenomenon to be explained by commentators and intellectuals who seem to assume that identity becomes legitimate only once it has passed through the filter of their interpretation.

For those of us who come from the diaspora, this entire framework appears fundamentally backwards. We do not understand our identity as something bestowed upon us by commentators in Dublin. We do not regard Irishness as a gift conferred by journalists, academics or cultural gatekeepers. Our connection to Ireland arrived long before we had ever heard of opinion columns, literary festivals or social theory. It came through grandparents who left Ireland carrying memories of another life. It came through parents who maintained traditions that would often have been easier to abandon. It came through stories told around kitchen tables, through summer visits to relatives, through Irish music, Irish sport, Irish clubs and Irish community organisations that consciously preserved a sense of continuity between one generation and the next. Many members of the diaspora inherited Irishness in exactly the same way that people born in Ireland did: through family, community and culture. The only difference is that they inherited it beyond Ireland's geographical boundaries. To suggest that such people somehow discovered their Irishness because Brexit made it useful is not merely inaccurate. It betrays an inability to understand how identity actually functions within emigrant communities.

This inability becomes even more glaring when one considers the historical experiences of Irish communities in Britain. Contemporary Irish commentary often portrays emigration as a route to opportunity, freedom and prosperity, and for many emigrants it undoubtedly was. Yet this retrospective narrative can easily obscure a harsher reality. The Britain encountered by generations of Irish emigrants was not always welcoming, tolerant or inclusive. Many arrived in cities and towns where Irish people occupied an ambiguous social position. They were often viewed with suspicion, stereotyped in popular culture and treated as outsiders despite their proximity to British society. The descendants of those emigrants inherited not only a cultural tradition but also a memory of what it meant to preserve that tradition under circumstances that were frequently difficult. This is a history that tends to be poorly understood by commentators whose experience of Irish-British relations is shaped more by contemporary liberal assumptions than by the realities of working-class emigrant life.

That reality became particularly stark during the years of the Troubles. Every IRA bombing reverberated far beyond Northern Ireland itself. In cities throughout Britain, ordinary Irish people often found themselves living beneath a cloud of suspicion generated by events entirely beyond their control. Men and women who despised violence and had no connection whatsoever to paramilitary organisations frequently discovered that their identity alone was enough to attract scrutiny, misunderstanding or hostility. Entire Irish communities became associated in the public imagination with crimes they neither supported nor committed. Families who had spent years building productive and peaceful lives suddenly found themselves answering for events in Birmingham, Guildford, Hyde Park, Warrington and elsewhere. The descendants of emigrants who lived through those decades remember that atmosphere clearly. They remember what it felt like to carry an Irish surname when anti-Irish sentiment was running high. They remember the glances, the assumptions and the suspicions. They remember that being Irish was not always something that attracted admiration. Sometimes it attracted quite the opposite.

There was nothing remotely convenient about maintaining an Irish identity in those circumstances. There was nothing convenient about preserving Irish traditions when complete assimilation would have been easier. There was nothing convenient about remaining connected to a culture that occasionally exposed you to prejudice, misunderstanding or exclusion. Yet hundreds of thousands of people did precisely that. They maintained Irish clubs and societies. They organised GAA competitions and cultural events. They passed stories, traditions and memories to their children and grandchildren. They retained emotional and cultural attachments to a country from which many had been separated for decades. They did these things not because there was a practical benefit attached to them and certainly not because they anticipated the future existence of European citizenship rights. They did them because Irishness mattered. It formed part of their identity. It connected them to family, history and community. The notion that this experience can be reduced to a discussion about convenience demonstrates how detached establishment commentary can become from the realities it claims to describe.

What is most frustrating about arguments such as O'Toole's is the unspoken assumption that the descendants of emigrants still have something to prove. Again and again, diaspora Irish people find themselves subjected to tests that native-born Irish people never encounter. Are they authentic enough? Are they sufficiently connected? Do they understand the culture? Have they earned the right to call themselves Irish? Although such questions are often implied rather than stated explicitly, they lurk beneath countless discussions about citizenship, identity and belonging. The effect is to create a hierarchy of Irishness in which those living on the island enjoy an unquestioned claim to the nation while those abroad are placed under permanent examination. It is a remarkably patronising attitude. More than that, it is an absurd one.

After everything the diaspora has achieved, the suggestion that second and third-generation Irish people still have something left to prove is laughable. The descendants of Irish emigrants have distinguished themselves in politics, business, science, medicine, academia, the military, sport, literature, the arts and public life across Britain, Australia, North America and beyond. They have become prime ministers, cabinet ministers, judges, entrepreneurs, military commanders, university leaders, Nobel laureates, cultural figures and sporting champions. Entire generations carried Irish identity into every corner of the English-speaking world while making immense contributions to the countries in which they lived. At the same time, countless families retained enduring ties to Ireland through memory, tradition and community life. If achievement is the test, they passed it long ago. If commitment is the test, they passed it generations ago. If maintaining an attachment to Ireland is the test, they have been passing it continuously for over a century. The idea that they now require approval from newspaper columnists in order to legitimize their identity would be laughable were it not so persistent.

Ultimately, what O'Toole's "flag of convenience" argument reveals is not a truth about the diaspora but a limitation within the worldview of the Irish intellectual establishment itself. It reveals a class of commentators who have become so accustomed to speaking about Irish identity that they increasingly imagine themselves entitled to define it. It reveals a tendency to mistake observation for ownership and analysis for authority. Most of all, it reveals an inability to accept a simple historical reality: the Irish nation was never confined to the island. It was carried abroad by millions of emigrants who transmitted it from one generation to the next. Their descendants are not guests in the Irish story. They are protagonists in it.

Five years after first drafting these reflections during the Covid lockdowns, I remain convinced that the real issue was never Brexit and never passports. The real issue was whether the descendants of Irish emigrants should continue to tolerate being treated as applicants for admission to a community they have always belonged to. My answer remains the same today as it was in 2021. The descendants of Irish emigrants do not need Fintan'spermission to be Irish. They do not need his approval. They do not need his welcome. Their grandparents settled that question when they carried Ireland across the Irish Sea. Their parents settled it when they preserved Irish identity through decades of assimilation and prejudice. Their generation settled it again through their achievements and their continued commitment to their heritage. The passport did not create the identity. The identity created the demand for the passport.

Bio

Tim Flynn (writing as TS Flynn) is an Australian-Irish writer whose interests include Irish history, culture, music and diaspora affairs. His work explores the people, events and stories that continue to shape Ireland's identity at home and abroad.

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