Before the Romans built their roads, before the pyramids were finished, for almost any civilization you learned about in school, our people were already here [for] 9,000 years. We built Newgrange [3100 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.] to catch the winter solstice sun. We developed our own laws, the Brehon laws. We produced art, poetry, music, and mythology that is still around to this day. Your ancestors lived this. Today it lives through you, and yet somehow in the country our ancestors bled for we're being asked to believe that Irish identity is just a passport, just a piece of paper, that it belongs to anyone who arrives and claims it. Ask yourself would anyone say that about the Maori? Would anyone tell them their identity is just administrative? That someone living in New Zealand is Maori? That anyone can be Maori if they move to New Zealand? The Maoris arrived in New Zealand in 1,250 AD, 800 years ago. The Irish have lived in Ireland for 9000 years yet our identity is something arbitrary. You become it if you are here long enough. It's not within you anymore. It is a living connection to 9000 years of people who loved this island, shaped it, and died for it. It is worth protecting. Is being Irish just being born here? Is that what being Irish is? Or, is being Irish, ancestry? Is it a connection to the people of this island for the last 9,000 years? You are a part of them. If you have a surname, like McCarty and you're from Kerry and Cork, chances are you descended from that family a 1,000 years ago and you've been there ever since. If you are an O'Brien, you probably come from the family of Brian Boru, a famous High King of Ireland. If you're an O'Connor, you're probably a descendant from the King of Connacht. We are a people. The foreigners coming into Ireland saying they are Irish the same as us, turning our identity into something arbitrary, "it is the things you do," aren't our friends. They might come across very nice. They might be very friendly, but they are an enemy to Irish identity. They are trying to turn it into something that it's not something dismissable. It is the same if I went over to New Zealand and I started calling myself a Maori. I said I am just as Maori as everyone else. Would that be right? Would I be a friend to the Maoris if I did that? If I looked them in the eye and I said I am as Maori as you something to think about.
