40 Euros and You’re Irish
Already bought a moon rock, or had a star named after you? Well, now you can become certified Irish for just 40 euros. In another initiative in the current re-inventing Ireland series, which features the 5% reduction in hair cutting taxes, the Department of Foreign Affairs is set to produce neat little green fringed Somewhat Irish Certs to anybody with some lick of Irish ancestry, just like the Gaels Muhammad Ali and Barrack O’Bama.
Myles na gapoleen Oversees
The Department of Flann O’Brien is also involved. The official rules state that only those with documentary evidence of some links to the sod — ancestral birth or death certificates, census records, a note from your mother, teacher’s green shamrock sticker, etc. — will gain these official decrees. However, Minister Mc Loophole will have discretion to “waive one or more of the conditions,” particularly if the records of druidic ancestry or gran’s clover have vanished because of the “passage of time or loss of records.”
Question 1: How many near-death famine victims stuffed into the holds of Coffin Ships to Gros Isle etc brought a complete set of ready-for-modern bureacracy documentation along in their valises, briefcases, and portmanteaux? Question 2: What nation lost half of all of its ancestral records in the conflagration at the Four Courts? Question 3?: Exactly how many families around the world have lost ancestral records due to the passage of time?
Minister Mc Loophole Explains
Minister Mc Loophole and his deputy Good Man Yourself are at pains to say that not every single person in the world will now qualify for the Somewhat Irish Cert. “Anyone from Atlantis will not cut it,” said Good Man Yourself.
Good Man Yourself continued: “And though we are a remarkable people whose tireless industry, playful wit, and high moral standards have enriched the progress of nearly every nation on earth, as well as being a proud soverign country which instituted a hair-cutting tax reduction with nil prodding from the IMF, we do know that there are places out there with little Irish connection documented. For example, a Mr. Borat from Kashazstan has made inquires, and we have doubts about the depths of his Irishness.”
Will head, chin and ear measurements be accepted as supporting documentation of ancestral Irishness?
Here Minister Mc Loophole stepped forward. “Although the Irish educational system is the best in the world, and our nanotechnology has already yielded world leading tracking systems to tie bicycles to their rightful owner, the government has had to require, on a limited, and temporary basis, cutbacks in the Goebells Chair.”
Row Over Who Owns Harp
This being Ireland, snafus have slowed the initiative to bestow the brand Ireland name globally. Fexco, the Kerry company, handling the the things, had to tussle over permission to use a harp logo on its Somewhat Irish Certs with the government department in charge of the harp image (really) — Enterprise, Trade, and Employment.
Row Over Moola
Also, Fexco wanted to deliver some cut-rate tourist deals with the thingamajig, but card-carrying Real Irish People have been complaining that they should not have to pay more for anything than card-carrying Somewhat Irish People.
Fexco also wants to introduce embassy fetes and tree-planting dos for holders of the SIC.
Whether Mossad or Jihadists like Jihad Jane will apply remains unknown.
