By John Spain

ST. Patrick’s Day is here again, the day when what it means to be Irish is celebrated not only here but wherever the Paddys have settled across the world. Which is everywhere from Kanturk to Kazakhstan, in both directions around the globe.

But exactly what does it mean to be Irish these days? If you had to choose a national symbol or image or aspect of Irish life today to sum up what we have become in 2006, what would that be?

Well, for a start, it won’t be that $39 leprechaun suit on offer in your local party store. And you can forget your shillelagh and your shamrock, your leprechaun hat and your sod of turf and your green beer.

Even the pint of Guinness no longer measures up as the national symbol it once was (since more and more of us these days are staying away from the pub to drink a nice Bordeaux at home and have a smoke in peace).

So what epitomizes Ireland and the Irish in 2006? Here is my list of a dozen aspects of Irish life that illustrate what we have become (and I will be watching the letters page for further suggestions in the coming weeks — instead of misquoting me, make your own list!)

1. The Townhouse. With property prices still soaring here, most young couples can’t afford a house and don’t want to live in an apartment. So developers now build tiny houses called townhouses, with tiny bedrooms and tiny open plan living areas to make them look bigger. And they still cost way over *300,000 even when they’re miles out of town.

Mind you, the mini kitchens have lots of gleaming stainless steel and granite worktops. And there are no pigs in these minimalist kitchens (even if you wanted to keep one there wouldn’t be room).

2. The SUV. Even if you live in a tiny townhouse, you must have your four-wheel drive parked outside on your tiny driveway. The only off roading you will be doing is mounting the curb when you’re dropping the kids to school. But you just don’t feel like a Celtic Tiger without one.

3. The Traffic Jam. Since you live miles out of town you spend up to two hours commuting through the gridlock over a trip that should take 30 minutes ... and then you do it again going home.

You don’t see any of de Valera’s comely maidens dancing at the crossroads on the way. Their places have been taken by Nigerian newspaper sellers and Romanian window washers.

4. The Construction Crane. All Ireland seems to be a construction site. You can stand anywhere in Dublin and count the cranes.

But you can also stand in towns in Cavan and Leitrim in the supposedly deserted midlands and count all the new apartment blocks and holiday homes, built for city dwellers who want a weekend refuge and a boat on the Shannon and who get a big tax break to tempt them.

5. The Landlord. God be with the days when landlord was a dirty word in Ireland and all the landlords were English gentry. Now everyone here wants to be a landlord.

If you’ve made it, you can afford to buy two or three townhouses (see above) and rent them out to local couples or immigrant workers. Then you sit back, count the cash, feel smug and try not to worry about a property crash.

6. The Foreign Invest-ment. Being a local landlord is only the start. You’re nobody in Ireland these days if you don’t have a property portfolio abroad.

It used to be Spain and Portugal. Now the Paddys are buying up Eastern Europe, apartments in Prague and Budapest and on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. There are three prices, one for locals, one for foreign buyers, and one for the Irish!

The latest place is the Cape Verde Islands. Hands up all those who don’t have a clue where they are (they’re off the west coast of Africa).

7. The Private School. Schools in Ireland are generally very good and they’re free, funded by the state. But in the new Ireland, everyone wants to send their kids to private fee-paying schools which cost a fortune. They do this even though many non fee-paying schools get results which are as good or better.

Why? It’s all about Celtic networking, making the right connections. You can’t start early enough, right?

8. The Teen With Everything. Oh. My. God. Irish teens today are high maintenance, especially the girls who have all the iPods, 3G phones and other gizmos you can imagine and start every sentence with Oh. My. God.

They take the two or three family holidays a year for granted. Well hello! Everyone skis.

Perfect hair and full make-up are for everyday. And they expect parents to spend thousands on their braces and teeth whitening to get that celebrity look.

8. The A La Carte Catholic. If the church is a restaurant, the Irish don’t eat off the set menu any more. They’re a la carte Catholics, picking and choosing the bits they like.

The church is good for weddings and funerals, but in between, apart from Christmas, they don’t go to Mass much. And as for the teaching on sexuality — it’s a scream, isn’t it?

9. The Skanger. Dublin slang for young males from deprived areas who live in expensive tracksuits and equally expensive sneakers. They venture into the city center in groups on weekends to drink, deal drugs and mug people for their mobile phones or snatch their bags in search of cash.

This is the other side of the Celtic Tiger, the growing army of youngsters who don’t make it and hate everyone as a result. Jobless, aimless and brainless, their ambition goes no further than the thrill of hitting a cop on the head with a brick in a riot on O’Connell Street.

10. The Multi-Cultural Melting Pot. Once upon a time the only Irish black people were Phil Lynott and Paul McGrath. Now the black population here is in the thousands, mostly Africans who came in through the Irish baby loophole.

But the African-Irish are now vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of new immigrants from Eastern Europe. Ireland (and Dublin in particular) is now a melting pot of people from everywhere.

Loud conversations in Polish or Ukrainian fill the air at Dublin bus stops. Will it work? Will the skangers (see above) object? Leaving aside the PC guff, that remains to be seen.

11. The Hospital Trolley. The fast expanding Irish population is putting huge pressure on state services here like public transport, schools and hospitals. So most days now 200 or 300 people are on trolleys in casualty rooms around the country waiting — for 24 hours or more — for hospital beds.

Our low tax regime may be driving the Tiger on but we’re falling behind on infrastructure. And it’s not just health. In spite of our high tech image we’re way down the list of countries in terms of access to broadband, for example.

12. The Big Project. In spite of not being able to provide enough hospital beds or get class sizes in junior schools much below 30 pupils per teacher, we love the Big Project.

First it was the Dart electric commuter train, then the Luas electric on-street trams, then the Port Tunnel to get the trucks out of the city center and now (just announced) it’s the underground Metro to the airport and beyond.

All very prestigious. But we are so bad at controlling costs on these projects that we have become the laughingstock of Europe.

It costs three times more to build a motorway or a tunnel in Ireland than it does in Spain. The Metro estimate (for about 10 miles) is *1.5 billion. But you can double that ... at least!

So happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all!